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SPARE HOURS 



BY 



JOHN BROWN, M.D. 



SECOND SERIES. 




BOSTON: 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 

1866, 






author's edition. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 






THE AUTHOR 

DEDICATES THIS VOLUME TO 
THE MEMORY OF 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

"who through faith sqbdued kingdoms, and 
wrought righteousness." 



CONTENTS. 

♦ 

PlGK 

John Leech •• l 

Maejorie Fleming •••••• 47 

Jeems the Door-Keeper . • • . • .81 

MiNCHMOOR • . . • • • • • 99 

The Enterkin 115 

Health • • • • 141 

The Duke op Atholb • « • • • .213 

Struan • • . • 221 

Thackeray's Death 227 

Thackeray's Literary Career • • . 237 

More of " Our Dogs " 325 

Plea for a Dog Home 333 

"Bibliomania" 339 

"In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision". . 383 

A Jacobite Family 401 



JOHN LEECH 





JOHN LEECH. 

]F man is made to mourn, he also, poor fellow ! 
and without doubt therefore, is made to laugh. 
He needs it all, and he gets it. For human 
nature may say of herself, in the words of the 
ballad, " Werena my heart licht, I wad die." 

Man is the only animal that laughs ; it is as peculiar to 
him as his chin and his hippocampus minor,^ The per- 
ception of a joke, the smile, the sense of the ludicrous, 
the quiet laugh, the roar of laughter, are all our own ; and 
we may be laughed as well as tickled to death, as in the 
story of the French nun of mature years, who, during a 
vehement fit of laughter, was observed by her sisters to 
sit suddenly still and look very " gash " (like the Laird 
of Garscadden f), this being considered a further part of 
the joke, when they found she was elsewhere. 

In books, old and new, there is no end of philosophiz- 
ing upon the ludicrous and its cause ; from Aristotle, who 
says it is some error in truth or propriety, but at the same 
time neither painful nor pernicious ; and Cicero, who de- 
fines it as that which, without impropriety, notes and 



* No other animal has a chin proper ; and it is a comfort, in its own 
small way, that Mr. Huxley has not yet found the lesser sea-horse in 
our grandfather's brain. 

t Vide Dean Ramsay's Reminiscences. 



4 JOHN LEECH. 

exposes an impropriety ; to Jean Paul, who says it is the 
opposite of the sublime, the infinitely great, and is there- 
fore the infinitely little ; and Kant, who gives it as the 
sudden conversion into nothing of a long raised and 
highly wrought expectation; many have been the at- 
tempts to unsphere the spirit of a joke and make it 
tell its secret; but we agree with our excellent and 
judicious friend Quinctilian, that its ratio is at best 
anceps. There is a certain robust felicity about old 
Hobbes's saying, that " it is a sudden glory ^ or sense of 
eminency above others or our former selves." There is 
no doubt at least about the suddenness and the glory ; all 
true laughter must be involuntary, must come and go as 
it lists, must take us and shake us heartily and by sur- 
prise. No man can laugh any more than he can sneeze 
at will, and he has nearly as little to do with its ending: 
it dies out, disdaining to be killed. He may grin and 
guffaw, because these are worked by muscles under the 
dominion of volition ; but your diaphragm, the midriff, 
into which your joker pokes his elbow, he is the great 
organ of genuine laughter and the sudden glory, and he, 
as you all know, when made absurd by hiccup, is master- 
less as the wind, " untamable as flies " ; therefore is he 
called by the grave Haller, nohilissimus post cor musculus ; 
for, ladies and gentlemen, your heart is only a (often 
very) hollow muscle. If you wish to know what is done 
in your interior when you laugh, here it is from Dr. Car- 
penter. He classes it along with sobbing and hiccup, and 
says : " In it the muscles of expiration are in convulsive 
movement, more or less violent, and send out the breath 
in a series of jerks, the glottis being open," — the glottis 
being the little chink at the top of the windpipe. 

As to the mental impression on the sensorium that sets 



JOHN LEECH. 5 

these jerks agoing, and arches that noble muscle, we, as 
already said, think it may be left to a specific sense of its 
own, and that laughter is the effect and very often the 
cause of the laughable, and therefore of itself, — a defini- 
tion which has the merit of being self-contained. But is 
it not well that we are made to laugh, that, from the first 
sleepy gleam moving like sunshine over an infant's cheek, 
to the cheery and feeble chirrup of his great-grandfather 
by the fireside, we laugh at the laughable, when the depths 
of our strange nature are dappled and rippled, or tossed 
into wildest laughter by anything, so that it be droll, just 
as we shudder when soused with cold water, — because we 
can't help it ? 

But we are drifting into disquisition, and must beware. 
What is it to us or the public that the pneumogastric and 
phrenic nerves are the telegraphs from their head-quarters 
in the brain to this same midriff; that if cut, there would 
be an end of our funny messages, and of a good deal 
more ; that the musculus nohiUssimus^ if wounded in its 
feelings from without or from within, takes to outrageous 
laughter of the dreariest sort ; that if anything goes 
wrong at the central thalamic as they are called, of these 
nerves, the vehicles of will and feeling, they too make 
sad fools of themselves by sending down absurd, incohe- 
rent telegrams " at lairge " ? 

One might be diffuse upon the various ways in which 
laughter seizes upon and deals with mankind : how it ex- 
cruciates some, making them look and yell as if caught 
in a trap. How a man takes to crowing like a cock, or 
as if under permanent hooping-cough, ending his series 
of explosions victoriously with his well-known " clarion 
wild and shrill." How provocative of laughter such a 



6 JOHN LEECH. 

musical performance always is to his friends, leading them 
to lay snares for him ! We knew an excellent man — a 
country doctor — who, if wanted in the village, might be 
traced out by his convivial crow. It was droll to observe 
him resisting internally and on the sly the beginnings of 
his bravura; how it always prevailed. How another 
friend, huge, learned, and wise, whom laughter seizes and 
rends, is made desperate, and at times ends in crashing 
his chair, and concluding his burst on its ruins, and on 
the floor. In houses where he is familiar, a special chair 
is set for him, braced with iron for the stress. 

Then one might discourse on the uses of laughter as a 
muscular exercise ; on its drawing into action lazy mus- 
cles, supernumeraries, which get off easily under ordinary 
circumstances ; how much good the convulsive succussion 
of the whole man does to his chylo-poietic and other 
viscera ; how it laughs to scorn care and malaise of all 
kinds; how it makes you cry without sorrow, and ache 
every inch of you without wrong done to any one ; how it 
clears the liver and enlivens the spleen, and makes the 
very cockles of the heart to tingle. By the by, what are 
these cockles of tradition but the columnce carnece, that 
pull away at the valves, and keep all things tight ? 

But why should we trouble ourselves and you with 
either the physiology or the philosophy of laughter, when 
all that anybody needs to say or to hear is said, so as to 
make all after saying hopeless and needless, by Sydney 
Smith, in his two chapters on Wit and Humor, in his 
Notes of Lectures on Moral Philosophy ? Why it is that 
when any one — except possibly Mr. Tupper — hears for 
the first time that wisest of wits' joke to his doctor, when 
told by him to " take a walk on an empty stomach " ; — 
" on whose ? " — he laughs right out, loud and strong, may 



JOHN LEECH. 7 

be a question as hard to answer as the why he curls up 
his nose when tickled with a straw, or sneezes when he 
looks at the sun ; but it is not hard to be thankful for the 
joke, and for the tickle, and for the sneeze. Our busi- 
ness rather is now gratefully to acknowledge the singular 
genius, the great personal and artistic worth, of one of our 
best masters of ." heart-easing mirth," than to discourse 
upon the why and how he makes us laugh so pleas- 
antly, so wholesomely and well, — and to deplore, along 
with all his friends (who has not in him lost a friend?), 
his sudden and irreparable loss. It was as if something 
personal to every one was gone ; as if a fruit we all ate 
and rejoiced in had vanished forever ; a something good 
and cheery, and to be thankful for, which came every 
week as sure as Thursday — never to come again. Our 
only return to him for all his unfailing goodness and cheer 
is the memory of the heart; and he has it if any man in 
the British empire has. The noble, honest, kindly, dili- 
gent, sound-hearted, modest, and manly John Leech, — 
the very incarnation in look, character, and work of the 
best in an Englishman. 

As there is and has always been, since we had letters 
or art of our own, a rich abounding power and sense of 
humor and of fun in the English nature, so ever since 
that same nature was pleased to divert and express itself 
and its jokes in art as well as in books, we have had no 
lack of depicters of the droll, the odd, the terrible, and 
the queer. Hogarth is the first and greatest of them all, 
the greatest master in his own terrihile via the world has 
ever seen. If you want to know his worth and the 
exquisite beauty of his coloring, study his pictures, and 
possess his prints, and read Charles Lamb on his genius. 
Then came the savage Gillray, strong and coarse as 



8 JOHN LEECH. 

Churchill, the very Tipton Slasher of political caricature ; 
then we had Bunbury, Rowlandson, and Woodward, more 
violent than strong, more odd than droll, and often more 
disgusting than either. Smirke, with his delicate, pure, 
pleasant humor, as seen in his plates to Don Quixote^ which 
are not unworthy of that marvellous book, the most deeply 
and exquisitely humorous piece of genius in all litera- 
ture ; then Edwin Landseer's Monkeyana, forgotten by, 
and we fear unknown to many, so wickedly funny, so 
awfully human, as almost to convert us to Mr. Huxley'3 
pedigree, — The Duel^ for instance. Then we had Henry 
Aiken in the Hunting Field, and poor Heath, the ex- 
Captain of Dragoons, facile and profuse, unscrupulous and 
clever. Then the greatest since Hogarth, though limited 
in range and tending to excess, George Cruickshank, who 
happily still lives and plies his matchless needle; — it 
would take an entire paper to expound his keen, pene- 
trating power, his moral intensity, his gift of wild grimace, 
the dexterity and super-subtlety of his etching, its firm 
and delicate lines. Then came poor short-lived tragical 
Seymour, whom Thackeray wished to succeed as artist to 
Pickwick ; he embodied Pickwick as did " Phiz," — Hablot 
Browne, — Messrs. Quilp and Pecksniffs and Micky Free, 
and whose steeple-chasing Irish cocktails we all know and 
relish ; but his manner is too much for him and for us, 
and his ideas are neither deep nor copious, hence everlast^ 
ing and weak repetitions of himself Kenny Meadows, 
with more genius, especially for fiends and all eldritch fan- 
cies, and still more mannerism. Sibson and Hood, whose 
drawings were quaint and queer enough, but his words 
better and queerer. Thackeray, very great, answering 
wonderfully his own idea. We wonder that his Snobs 
and Modern Novelists and miscellaneous papers were 



JOHN LEECH. 9 

ever published without his own cuts. What would Mrs. 
Perkins's Ball be without The Mulligan^ as the spread- 
eagle, frantic and glorious, doing the mazurka, without 
Miss Bunyon^ and them all ; and the good little Nightin- 
gale^ singing " Home, Sweet Home" to that young, pre- 
mature brute Hewlett, in Dr. Birch, But we have 
already recorded our estimate of Mr. Thackeray's worth 
as an artist ; * and all his drolleries and quaint bits of 
himself, — his comic melancholy, his wistful children, his 
terrific soldans in the early Punches. They should all be 
collected, — whierever he escapes from his pen to his 
pencil, they should never be divorced. Then Doyle, with 
his wealth of dainty fantasies, his glamourie, his won- 
derful power of expressing the weird and uncanny, his 
fairies and goblins, his enchanted castles and maidens, his 
plump caracolling pony chargers, his charm of color and 
of unearthly beauty in his water-colors. No one is more 
thoroughly himself and alone than Doyle. We need only 
name his father, " H. B.," the master of gentlemanly, 
political satire, — as Gillray was of brutal. Tenniel we 
still have, excellent, careful, and often strong and effec- 
tive ; but more an artist and a draughtsman than a genius 
or a humorist. 

John Leech is different from all these, and, taken as a 
whole, surpasses them all, even Cruickshank, and seats 
himself next, though below, William Hogarth. Well 
might Thackeray, in his delightful notice of his friend 
and fellow- Carthusian in The Quarterly, say, "There is 
no blmking the fact, that in Mr. Punch's Cabinet John 
Leech is the right-hand man. Fancy a number of 
Punch without Leech's picture ! What would you give 
for it ? " This was said ten years ago. How much more 

* North British Review, No. LXXIX., February, 1864. 
1* 



10 JOHN LEECH. 

true it is now ! We don't need io fancy it any longer! 
And yet, doubtless, Nature is already preparing some one 
else — she is forever filling her horn — whom we shall 
never think better, or in his own way, half so good, but 
who like him will be, let us trust, new and true, modest 
and good ; let us, meanwhile, rest and be thankful, and 
look back on the past. We '11 move on by and by, " to 
fresh fields and pastures new," we suppose, and hope. 

We are not going to give a biography, or a studied 
appraisement of this great artist, — that has been already 
well done in the Gornhill^ — and we trust the mighty 
" J. O.," who knew him and loved him as a brother, and 
whose strong and fine hand — its truth, nicety, and 
power — we think we recognize in an admirable short 
notice of Leech as one of the " Men of Mark," in the 
London Review of May 31, 1862, — may employ his leis- 
ure in giving us a memorial of his friend. No one could 
do it better, not even the judicious Tom Taylor, and it is 
worth his while to go down the great stream side by side 
with such a man. All that we shall now do is to give 
some particulars, not, so far as we know, given to the 
public, and end with a few selected woodcuts from Punchy 
— illustrative of his various moods and gifts, — for which 
we are indebted to the kindness of Messrs. Bradbury and 
Evans, — two men to whom and to whose noble generosity 
and enterprise we owe it that Punch is what he is ; men 
who have made their relation to him and to his staiF of 
writers and artists a labor of love ; dealing in every- 
thing, from the quality of the paper up to the genius, 
with truly disinterested liberality ; and who, to give only 
one instance, must have given Mr. Leech, during his 
twenty-three years' connection with them, upwards of 
£40,000, — money richly deserved, and well won, for no 



JOHN LEECH. 11 

money could pay in full what he was to them and to us ; 
but still not the less honorable to them than to him.* 

John Leech, we believe remotely of Irish extraction, 
was a thoroughly London boy, though never one whit of 
a Cockney in nature or look. He was born in 1817, 
being thus six years younger than Thackeray, both of 
them Charterhouse boys. We rejoice to learn that Lord 
Russell has, in the kindest way, given to Mr. Leech's 
eldest boy a presentation to this famous school, where the 
best men of London birth have so long had their training, 
as Brougham and Jeifrey, Scott and Cockburn, had at 
the Edinburgh High School. This gift of our Foreign 
Minister is twice blessed, and is an act the country may 
well thank him for. 

When between six and seven years of age, some of 

* When the history of the rise and progress of Punch comes to be 
written, it will be found that the Weekly Dinner has been one of the 
chief things which contributed to its success. Almost from the foun- 
dation of that journal it has been the habit of the contributors every 
Wednesday to dine together. In the winter months, the dinner is usu- 
ally held in the front room of the first floor of No. 11 Bouverie Street, 
Whitefriars, — the business offices of the proprietors, Messrs. Bradbury 
and Evans. Sometimes these dinners are held at the Bedford Hotel, 
Covent Garden. During the summer months, it is customar^^ to have 
ten or twelve dinners at places in the neighborhood of London, Green- 
wich, Richmond, Blackwall, etc. And once a year they attend the 
annual dinner of the firm, at which compositors, readers, printers, 
machinemen, clerks, etc., dine. This dinner is called the " Way 
Goose,'* and is often referred to in Punch. 

At the weekly dinner, the contents of the forthcoming number of 
Punch are discussed. When the cloth is removed, and dessert is laid 
on the table, the first question put by the editor is, " What shall the 
Cartoon be?" 

During the lifetimes of Jerrold and Thackeray, the discussions after 
dinner ran very high, owing to the constitutional antipathy existing be- 
tween these two. Jerrold being the oldest, as well as the noisiest, gen- 
erally came oflf victorious. In these rows it required all the suavity 



12 JOHN LEECH. 

Leech's drawings were seen by the great Flaxman, and, 
after carefully looking at them and the boy, he said, 
" That boy must be an artist ; he will be nothing else or 
less." This was said in full consciousness of what is in- 
volved in advising such a step. His father wisely, doubt- 
less, thought otherwise, and put him to the medical pro- 
fession at St. Bartholomew's, under Mr. Stanley. He 
was very near being sent to Edinburgh, and apprenticed 
to Sir George Ballingall. If he had come to us then, he 
would have found one student, since famous, with whom 
he would have cordialized, — Edward, afterwards Profes- 
sor Forbes, who to his other great gifts added that of 
drawing, especially of all sorts of wild, fanciful, elfish 
pleasantries and freaks, most original and ethereal, and 

of Mark Lemon (and he has a great deal of that quality) to calm the 
storm; his award always being final. 

The third edition of Wednesday's Sun is generally brought in to give 
the latest intelligence, so as to bring the Cartoon down to the latest date. 
On the Thursday morning following, the editor calls at the houses of 
the artists to see what is being done. On Friday night all copy is de- 
Hvered and put into type, and at two o'clock on Saturday proofs are 
revised, the forms made up, and with the last movement of the engine, 
the whole of the type is placed under the press, which cannot be moved 
until the Monday morning, when the steam is again up. This precau- 
tion is taken to prevent waggish tricks on the part of practical joking 
compositors. 

At these dinners none but those connected with the staff proper are 
permitted to attend; the only occasional exceptions, we believe, have 
been Sir Joseph Paxton, Mr. Layard, the present Foreign Under-Sec- 
retary, Charles Dickens, and Charles Dickens, junior. As an illustra- 
tion of the benefit arising from these meetings, we may mention that 
Jerrold always used to say, " It is no use any of us quarrelling, be- 
cause next Wednesday must come round with its dinner, when we will 
all have to shake hands ap-^iln." By means of these meetings, the dis- 
cussions arising on all questions helped both caricaturist and wit to 
take a broad view of things, as well as enabled the editor to get his 
team to draw well together, and give a uniformity of tone to all the 
contributioncs. 



JOHN LEECH. 13 

the specimens of which, in their many strange resting- 
places, it would be worth the while to reproduce in a 
volume. Leech soon became known among his fellow- 
students for his lifelike, keen, but always good-natured 
caricatures ; he was forever drawing. He never had any 
regular art-lessons, but his medical studies furnished him 
with a knowledge of the structure and proportions of the 
human form, which gives such reality to his drawing ; and 
he never parades his knowledge, or is its slave ; he values 
expression ever above mere form, never falsifying, but 
often neglecting, or rather subordinating, the latter to the 
former. This intense realism and insight, this pure in- 
tense power of observation it is that makes the Greek 
sculptors so infinitely above the Roman. 

We believe the Greeks knew nothing of what was 
under the skin, — it was considered profane to open the 
human body and dissect it ; but they studied form and 
action with that keen, sure, unforgetting, loving eye, that 
purely realistic faculty, which probably they, as a race, 
had in more exquisite perfection than any other people 
before or since. Objective truth they read, and could 
repeat as from a book. The Romans, with their hardy, 
penetrating, audacious nature, — rerum Domini^ — wanted 
to know not only what appears, but what is, and what 
makes appear. They had no misgivings or shyness at 
cutting into and laying bare their dead fellows, as little 
as they had in killing them or being themselves killed ; 
and as so often happens, their strength was their weak- 
ness, their pride their fall. They must needs show off 
their knowledge and their muscles, and therefore they 
made their statues as if without skin, and put on as vio- 
lent and often impossible action as ever did Buonarotti. 
Compare the Laocoon and his boys (small men, rather) 



14 JOHN LEECH. 

with the Elgin marbles ; the riders on the frieze so 
comely in their going, so lissome; their skin slipping 
sweetly over their muscles ; their modestly representing, 
not of what they know, but of what they see. 

In John Leech and Tenniel you see something of the 
same contrast : the one knows more than he needs, and 
shows it accordingly ; the other knowing by instinct, or 
from good sense, that drawing has only to do with appear- 
ances, with things that may be seen, not with things that 
may be known, drew merely what he saw ; but then with 
what an inevitable, concentrated eye and hand he did 
draw that ! This made him so pre-eminent in reproducing 
the expression of action, — especially intense and rapid 
action. No knowledge of what muscles were acting, and 
what are their attachments, etc., could teach a man how a 
horse trots, or how he gathers himself up to leap, or how 
a broken-backed cab-horse would lie and look, or even 
how Mr. Briggs — excellent soul — when returning home, 
gently, and copiously ebriose from Epsom on his donkey^ 
would sway about on his podgy legs, when instructing his 
amazed and ancient groom and friend as to putting up and 
rubbing down — the mare. But observation such as the 
Greeks had, that aKpL^da, or accuracy, — carefulness, as 
they called it, — enabled Leech to do all this to the life. 

All through his course, more and more, he fed upon 
Nature, and he had his reward in having perpetually at 
hand her freshness, her variety, her endlessness. There 
is a pleasant illustration of this given in a letter in Notes 
and Queries for November 5, 1864: — " On one occasion 
he and I were riding to town in an omnibus, when an 
elderly gentleman, in a very peculiar dress, and with very 
marked features, stepped into the vehicle, and sat down 
immediately in front of us. He stared so hard and 



JOHN LEECH. 15 

made such wry faces at us, that / could hardly refrain 
from laughter. My discomfiture was almost completed 
when Leech suddenly exclaimed, ' By the way, did Pren- 
dergast ever show you that extraordinary account which 
has been lately forwarded to him?' and, producing his 
note-book, added, ' Just run your eye up that column, and 
tell me what you can make of it/ The page was blank ; 
but two minutes afterwards the features of that strange 
old gentleman gaping at us were reflected with life-like 
fidehty upon it." There is humor in the choice of the 
word " Prendergast." This is the true way to nurse in- 
vention, to preen and let grow imagination's wings, on 
which she soars forth into the ideal, " sailing with supreme 
dominion through the azure depths of air." It is the man 
who takes in who can give out. The man who does not 
do the one, soon takes to spinning his own fancies out of 
his interior, like a spider, and he snares himself at last 
as well as his victims. It is the bee that makes honey, 
and it is out of the eater that there comes forth meat, 
out of the strong that there comes forth sweetness. 
In the letter we refer to, which is well worth reading, 
there is a good remark, that Leech had no mere minutice^ 
as Turner had none ; everything was subordinated to the 
main purpose he had ; but he had exquisite finesse and 
delicacy when it was that he wanted. Look at his draw- 
ing of our " Jocund Morn," from the boots to the swallows. 
His pencil work on wood was marvellous for freedom and 
loveliness. 

The bent of his genius and external causes made him, 
when about seventeen, give up the study of medicine and 
go in stoutly and for life for art. His diligence was 
amazing, as witnessed by the list we give, by no means 
perfect, of his works ; in Bentley they are in multitudes ; 



16 JOHN LEECH. 

and in Punch alone, up to 1862, there are more than three 
thousand separate drawings ! with hardly the vestige of a 
repetition ; it may be the same tune, but it is a new varia- 
tion. In nothing is his realistic power more seen than in 
those delightful records of his own holidays in Punch. A 
geologist will tell you the exact structure of that rock in 
the Tay at Campsie Linn, where Mr. Briggs is carrying 
out that huge salmon in his arms, tenderly and safely, as 
if it were his first-born. All his seascapes, — Scarbor- 
ough, Folkestone, Biarritz, etc., etc., — any one who has 
been there does not need to be told their names, and, as 
we have already said, his men are as native as his rocks, 
his bathers at Boulogne and Biarritz, his gamekeepers 
and gillies in Blair- Athole and Lochaber, — you have 
seen them there, the very men ; Duncan Roy is one of 
them ; and those men and women at Galway, in the Clad- 
dich, they are liker than themselves, more Irish than the 
Irish. In this respect his foreigners are wonderful, one 
of the rarest artistic achievements. Thackeray also 
could draw a foreigner, — as witness that dreary woman 
outworker in the Kickleburys. Mr. Frith can't. Then 
as to dress ; this was one of the things Leech very early 
mastered sind knew the meaning and power of; and it is 
worth mastering, for in it, the dress, is much of the man, 
both given and received. To see this, look at almost his 
first large drawing in Punch, two months after it started, 
called " Foreign Affairs." Look, too, at what is still one 
of his richest works, with all the fervor and abundance, 
the very dew of his youth, — the Comic Latin Gram- 
mar. Look at the dress of Menelaus, who threatens to 
give poor Helen, his wife, " a good hiding." Look at his 
droll etchings and woodcuts for the otherwise tiresome- 
ly brilliant Comic Histories, by Gilbert A'Beckett, with 
their too much puns. 



JOHN LEECH. 17 

Leech was singularly modest, both as a man and as an 
artist. This came by nature, and was indicative of the 
harmony and sweetness of his essence ; but doubtless the 
perpetual going to Nature, and drawing out of her fulness, 
kept him humble, as well as made him rich, made him, 
what every man of sense and power must be, conscious 
of his own strength ; but before the great mother he was 
simple and loving, attentive to her lessons, as a child, for- 
ever learning and doing. 

This honesty and modesty were curiously brought out 
when he was, after much persuasion, induced to make the 
colored drawings for that exhibition which was such a 
splendid success, bringing in nearly £5,000. Nothing 
could induce him to do what was wanted, call them paint- 
ings. " They are mere sketches," he said, " and very 
crude sketches too, and I have no wish to be made a 
laughing-stock by calling them what they are not." Here 
was at once modesty and honest pride, or rather that 
truthfulness which lay at the root of his character, and 
was also its " bright, consummate flower " ; and he went 
further than this, in having printed in the Catalogue the 
following words : " These sketches have no claim to be 
regarded or tested as finished pictures. It is impossible 
for any one to know the fact better than I do. They 
have no pretensions to a higher name than that I have 
given them, — Sketches in Oil." 

We have had, by the kindness of Mr. John Heugh, 
their possessor, the privilege of having beside us for some 
time two of the best of those colored sketches, and we 
feel at once the candor and accuracy of their author's 
title. It is quite touching the unaccustomedness, the 
boyish, anxious, laborious workmanship of the practised 
hand that had done so much, so rapidly and perfectly in 



18 JOHN LEECH. 

another style. They do not make us regret much that 
he did not earlier devote himself to painting proper, be- 
cause then what would have become of these three thou- 
sand cuts in Punch ? But he shows, especially, true 
powers of landscape painting, a pure and deep sense of 
distance, translucency, and color, and the power of gleams 
and shadows on water. His girls are lovelier without 
color, — have, indeed, " to the eye and prospect of the 
soul," a more exquisite bloom, the bloom within the skin, 
the brightness in the dark eye, all more expressed than 
in those actually colored. So it often is ; give enough to 
set the looker-on a-painting, imagining, realizing, bring- 
ing up " the shows of things to the desires of the mind," 
and no one but the highest painter can paint like that. 
This is the true office of the masters of all the ideal arts, 
to evoke, as did the rising sun on Memnon, the sleeping 
beauty and music and melody of another's soul, to make 
every reader a poet, every onlooker an artist, every lis- 
tener eloquent and tuneful, so be it that they have the 
seeing eye, the hearing ear, the loving and understanding 
heart. 

As is well known, this exhibition took London captive. 
It was the most extraordinary record, by drawing, of the 
manners and customs and dress of a people ever pro- 
duced. It was full " from morn to dewy eve," and as full 
of mirth ; at times this made it like a theatre convulsed 
as one man by the vis comica of one man. The laughter 
of special, often family groups, broke out opposite each 
drawing, spread contagiously effervescing throughout, 
lulling and waxing again and again like waves of the sea. 
From his reserve, pride, and nicety, Leech could never be 
got to go when any one was in the room ; he had an 
especial horror of being what he called " caught and 



JOHN LEECH. 19 

talked at by enthusiastic people." It is worth mention- 
ing here, as it shows his true literary turn as a humorist, 
and adds greatly to the completeness of his drawings and 
of his genius, that all the funny, witty, and often most 
felicitous titles and wordings of all sorts were written hy 
himself ; he was most particular about this. 

One day a sporting nobleman visited the gallery with 
his huntsman, whose naive and knowing criticisms greatly- 
amused his master. At last, coming to one of the favor- 
ite hunting pictures, he said, " Ah ! my Lord, nothin' 
but a party as knows 'osses cud have draw'd them ere 
'unters." The origin and means of these sketches in oil is 
curious. Mr. Leech had often been asked to undertake 
works of this character, but he had for so many years 
been accustomed to draw with the pencil, and that only 
on small blocks, that he had little conjadence in his ability 
to draw on a large scale. The idea originated with ]Mr. 
Mark Lemon, his friend and colleague, who saw that by 
a new invention — a beautiful piece of machinery — the 
impression of a block in Punch, being first taken on a 
sheet of india-rubber, was enlarged ; when, by a litho- 
graphic process, the copy thus got could be transferred 
to the stone, and impressions printed upon a large sheet 
of canvas. Having thus obtained an outline groundwork 
consisting of his own lines enlarged some eight times the 
area of the original block. Leech proceeded to color 
these. His knowledge of the manipulation of oil colors 
was very slight, and it was under the guidance of his 
friend, John Everett Millais, that his first attempts were 
made, and crude enough they were. He used a kind of 
transparent color which allowed the coarse lines of the 
enlargement to show through, so that the production pre- 
sented the appearance of indifferent lithographs, slightly 



20 JOHN LEECH. 

tinted. In a short time, however, he obtained great mas- 
tery over oil color, and instead of allowing the thick fatty 
lines of printers' ink to remain on the canvas, he, by the 
use of turpentine, removed the ink, particularly with re- 
gard to the lines of the face and figure. These he redrew 
with his own hand in a fine and delicate manner. To 
this he added a delicacy of finish, particularly in flesh 
color, which greatly enhanced the value and beauty of his 
later works. To any one acquainted with these sketches, 
we may mention, for illustration of these remarks, No. 65 
in the Catalogue. This work presents all the incomplete- 
ness and crudity of his early style. The picture repre- 
sents Piscator seated on a wooden fence on a raw morn- 
ing in a pelting shower of rain, the lines necessary to give 
the effect of a leaden atmosphere being very numerous 
and close. The works which illustrated his later style are 
best shown in Nos. 36 and 41. In the framing of these 
sketches he persisted in leaving a margin of white canvas, 
somewhat after the manner of water-color sketches. 

Of all art satirists none have such a pervading sense 
and power of girlish and ripe womanly beauty as Leech. 
Hogarth alone, as in his Poor Poet's Wife, comes near 
him. There is a genuine domesticity about his scenes 
that could come only from a man who was much at his 
own fireside, and in the nursery when baby was washed. 
You see he is himself 'paterfamilias^ with no Bohemian 
taint or raffish turn. What he draws he has seen. What 
he asks you to live in and laugh at and with, he has 
laughed at and lived in. It is this wholesomeness, and, 
to use the right word, this goodness, that makes Leech 
more than a drawer of funny pictures, more even than a 
great artist."^ It makes him a teacher and an example 

* It is honorable to the regular art of this country that many of its 



JOHN LEECH. 21 

of virtue in its widest sense, from that of manliness to 
the sweet devotion of woman, and the loving, open mouth 
and eyes of parvula on your knee. How different is the 
same class of art in France ! you dare not let your wife 
or girls see their Leech ; he is not for our virgins and 
boys. Hear what Thackeray says on this point : — 

" Now, while Mr. Leech has been making his comments 
upon our society and manners, one of the wittiest and 
keenest observers has been giving a description of his 
own country of France, in a thousand brilliant pages; 
and it is a task not a little amusing and curious for a 
student of manners to note the difference between the 
two satirists, — perhaps between the societies which they 
describe. Leech's England is a country peopled by no- 
ble elderly squires, riding large-boned horses, followed 
across country by lovely beings of the most gorgeous 
proportions, by respectful retainers, by gallant little boys 
emulating the courage and pluck of the sire. The joke 
is the precocious courage of the child, his gallantry as he 
charges at his fences, his coolness as he eyes the glass of 
port or tells grandpapa that he likes his champagne dry. 
How does Gavarni represent the family-father, the sire, 
the old gentleman in his country, the civilized country? 
Paterfamilias, in a dyed whig and whiskers, is leering by 
the side of Mademoiselle Coralie on her sofa in the Rue 
de Breda ; Paterfamilias, with a mask and a nose half a 
yard long, is hobbling after her at the ball. The enfant 
terrible is making Papa and Mamma alike ridiculous by 
showing us Mamma's lover, who is lurking behind the 

best men early recognized in Leech a true brother. Millais and El- 
more and others were his constant friends; and we know that more 
than twelve years ago Mr. Harvey, now the perspicacious President 
of the Royal Scottish Academy, wished to make Leech and Thackeray 
honorary members of that body. 



22 JOHN LEECH. 

screen. A thousand volumes are written protesting 
against the seventh commandment. The old man is 
forever hunting after the young woman, the wife is for- 
ever cheating the husband. The fun of the old comedy 
never seems to end in France ; and we have the word of 
their own satirists, novelists, painters of society, that it is 
being played from day to day. 

" In the works of that barbarian artist Hogarth, the 
subject which affords such playful sport to the civilized 
Frenchman is stigmatized as a fearful crime, and is vis- 
ited by a ghastly retribution. The English savage never 
thinks of such a crime as funny, and, a hundred years 
after Hogarth, our modern ' painter of mankind,' still re- 
tains his barbarous modesty, is tender with children, deco- 
rous before women, has never once thought that he had 
a right or calling to wound the modesty of either. 

" Mr. Leech surveys society from the gentleman's point 
of view. In old days, when Mr. Jerrold lived and wrote 
for that celebrated periodical, he took the other side : he 
looked up at the rich and great with a fierce, sarcastic 
aspect, and a threatening posture ; and his outcry or chal- 
lenge was : ' Ye rich and great, look out ! We, the 
people, are as good as you. Have a care, ye priests, 
wallowing on the tithe pig, and rolling in carriages and 
four ; ye landlords grinding the poor ; ye vulgar fine ladies 
bullying innocent governesses, and what not, — we will 
expose your vulgarity, we will put down your oppression, 
we will vindicate the nobility of our common nature,' and 
so forth. A great deal is to be said on the Jerrold side ; 
a great deal was said ; perhaps even a great deal too 
much. It is not a little curious to speculate upon the 
works of these two famous contributors of Punch, these 
two ' preachers,' as the phrase is. * Woe to you, you ty- 



JOHN LEECH. 23 

rant and heartless oppressor of the poor ! ' calls out Jerrold 
as Dives's carriage rolls by. ' Beware of the time when 
your bloated coachman shall be hurled from his box, when 
your gilded flunkey shall be cast to the earth from his 
perch, and your pampered horses shall run away with 
you and your vulgar wife, and smash you into ruin.' 
The other philosopher looks at Dives and his cavalcade 
in his own peculiar manner. He admires the horses, and 
copies with the most curious felicity their form and action. 
The footman's calves and powder, the coachman's red face 
and floss wig, the over-dressed lady and plethoric gentle- 
man in the carriage, he depicts with the happiest strokes ; 
and if there is a pretty girl and a rosy child on the back 
seat, he ' takes them up tenderly ' and touches them with 
a hand that has a caress in it. This artist is very tender 
towards all the little people. It is hard to say whether 
he loves boys or girls most, — those delightful little men 
on their ponies in the hunting-fields, those charming lit- 
tle Lady Adas flirting at the juvenile ball; or Tom the 
butcher's boy, on the slide ; or ragged little Emly pull- 
ing the go-cart freighted with Elizarann and her doll. 
Steele, Fielding, Goldsmith, Dickens, are similarly tender 
in their pictures of children. 'We may be barbarians, 

Monsieur ; but even the savages are occasionally 

kind to their papooses.' When are the holidays ? Moth- 
ers of families ought to come to this exhibition and bring 
the children. Then there are the full-grown young ladies 
— . the very full-grown young ladies — dancing in the 
ball-room, or reposing by the sea-shore ; the men can 
peep at whole seraglios of these beauties for the moder- 
ate charge of one shilling, and bring away their charm- 
ing likenesses in the illustrated catalogue (two-and-six). 
In the ' Mermaids' Haunt,' for example, there is a siren 



24 JOHN LEECH. 

combing her golden locks, and another dark-eyed witch 
actually sketching you as you look at her, whom Ulysses 
could not resist. To walk by the side of the much-sound- 
ing sea, and come upon such a bevy of beauties as this, 
what bliss for a man or a painter ! The mermaids in that 
haunt, haunt the beholder for hours after. Where is the 
shore on which those creatures were sketched ? The sly 
catalogue does not tell us. 

"The out-door sketcher will not fail to remark the 
excellent fidelity with which Mr. Leech draws the back- 
grounds of his httle pictures. The homely landscape, 
the sea, the winter wood by which the huntsmen ride, 
the light and clouds, the birds floating over head, are in- 
dicated by a few strokes which show the artist's untiring 
watchfulness and love of nature. He is a natural truth- 
teller, and indulges in no flights of fancy, as Hogarth 
was before him. He speaks his mind out quite honestly, 
like a thorough Briton. He loves horses, dogs, river and 
field sports. He loves home and children, that you can 
see. He holds Frenchmen in light esteem. A bloated 
' Mosoo ' walking Leicester Square, with a huge cigar 
and a little hat, with ' billard ' and ' estaminet ' written 
on his flaccid face, is a favorite study with him; the 
unshaven jowl, the waist tied with a string, the boots 
which pad the Quadrant pavement, this dingy and dis- 
reputable being exercises a fascination over Mr. Punch's 
favorite artist. We trace, too, in his works a prejudice 
against the Hebrew nation, against the natives of an 
island much celebrated for its verdure and its wrongs; 
these are lamentable prejudices indeed, but what man is 
without his own ? No man has ever depicted the little 
' Snob ' with such a delightful touch. Leech fondles 
and dandles this creature as he does the children. To 



JOHN LEECH. 25 

remember one or two of those dear gents is to laugh. 
To watch them looking at their own portraits in this 
pleasant gallery will be no small part of the exhibition ; 
and as we can all go and see our neighbors caricatured 
here, it is just possible that our neighbors may find some 
smart likenesses of their neighbors in these brilliant, life- 
like, good-natured sketches in oil." — TimeSj June 21, 1862. 
We could not resist giving this long extract. What 
perfection of thought and word ! It is, alas ! a draught 
of a wine we can no more get ; the vine is gone. What 
flavor in his "dear prisoned spirit of the impassioned 
grape ! " What a bouquet ! Why is not everything that 
hand ever wrote reproduced ? shall we ever again be 
regaled with such oenanthic acid and ether ? — the vola- 
tile essences by which a wine is itself and none other, — 
its flower and bloom ; the reason why Chambertin is not 
Sherry, and Sauterne neither. Our scientific friends will 
remember that these same delicate acids and oils are 
compounds of the lightest of all bodies, hydrogen, and 
the brightest when concentrated in the diamond, carbon ; 
and these in the same proportion as sugar ! Moreover, 
this ethereal oil and acid of wine, what we may call its 
genius, never exceeds a forty-thousandth part of the wine ! 
the elevating powers of the fragrant Burgundies are sup- 
posed^ to be more due to this essence than to its amount 
of alcohol. Thackeray, Jeremy Taylor, Charles Lamb, 
old Fuller, Sydney Smith, Ruskin, each have the fehcity 
of a specific oenanthic acid and oil, — a bouquet of his 
own ; others' wines are fruity or dry or brandied, or 
"from the Cape," or from the gooseberry, as the case 
may be. For common househould use, commend us to 
the stout home-brewed from the Swift, Defoe, Cobbet, 
and Southey taps. 

2 



26 JOHN LEECH. 

Much has been said about the annoyance which organ- 
grinding caused to Leech, but there were other things 
which also gave him great annoyance, and amongst these 
was his grievance against the wood-engravers. 

His drawings on the polished and chalked surface of 
the wood-block were beautiful to look at. Great admi- 
ration has been bestowed upon the delicacy and artistic 
feeling shown in the wood-blocks as they appeared in 
Punch ; but any one who saw these exquisite little gems 
as they came from his hands would scarcely recognize 
the same things when they appeared in print in Punch, 
When he had finished one of his blocks, he would show 
it to his ftiends and say, " Look at this, and watch for its 
appearance in Punch'' Sometimes he would point to a 
little beauty in a landscape, and calling particular atten- 
tion to it, would say that probably all his fine little 
touches would be " cut away," in a still more literal sense 
than that in which he uses the word in his address. 

When, however, we come to consider the circumstances 
and pressure under which these blocks were almost al- 
ways engraved, the wonder will be that they were so per- 
fect. The blocks upon which he drew were composed of 
small squares, fastened together at the back, so that when 
the drawing was completed on the block, it was unscrewed, 
and the various pieces handed over to a number of en- 
gravers, each having a square inch or two of landscape, 
figure, or face, as the case might be, not knowing what 
proportion of light and shade each piece bore to the 
whole. 

Had these blocks been carefully and thoughtfully en- 
graved by one hand, and then been printed by the hand 
instead of the steam press, we might have seen some of 
the finesse and beauty which the drawing showed before 
it was " cut away." 



JOHN LEECH. 27 

There was nothing that was so great a mark of the 
gentleness of his nature as his steady abstinence from 
personality. His correspondence was large, and a peru- 
sal of it only shows how careful he must have been, to 
have shunned the many traps that were laid for him to 
make him a partisan in personal quarrels. Some of the 
most wonderful suggestions were forwarded to him, but 
he had a mo^t keen scent for everything in the shape of 
personality. 

We need do little more than allude to the singular pu- 
rity and good taste manifested in everything he drew or 
wrote. We do not know any finer instance of blame- 
lebsness in art or literature, such perfect delicacy and 
cleanness of mind, — nothing coarse, nothing having 
the slightest taint of indecency, no double entendre, no 
laughing at virtue, no glorifying or glozing of vice,, — 
nothing to make any one of his own lovely girls blush, or 
his own handsome face hide itself. This gentleness and 
thorough gentlemanliness pervades all his works. They 
are done by a man you would take into your family and 
to your heart at once. To go over his four volumes of 
Pictures of Life and Character is not only a wholesome 
pleasure and diversion : it is a liberal education. And 
then he is not the least of a soft or goody man, no small 
sentimentalism or petit maitre work : he is a man and an 
Englishman to the backbone ; who rode and fished as if 
that were his chief business, took his fences fearlessly, 
quietly, and mercifully, and knew how to run his salmon 
and land him. He was, what is better still, a public- 
spirited man; a keen, hearty, earnest politician, with 
strong convictions, a Liberal deserving the name. His 
political pencillings are as full of good, energetic politics 
as they are of strong portraiture and drawing. He is 



28 JOHN LEECH. 

almost always on the right side, — sometimes, like his 
.great chief, Mr. Punch, not on the popular one. 

From the wonderful fidelity with which he rendered 
the cabmen and gamins of London, we might suppose he 
had them into his room to sit to him as studies. He never 
did this ; he liked actions better than states. He was 
perpetually taking notes of all he saw ; but this was the 
whole, and a great one. With this, and with his own 
vivid memory and bright informing spirit, he did it all. 
One thing we may be pardoned for alluding to as illus- 
trative of his art. His wife, who was every way worthy 
of him, and without w^hom he was scarce ever seen at 
any place of public amusement, was very beautiful ; and 
the appearance of those lovely English maidens we all 
so delight in, with their short foreheads, arch looks, and 
dark laughing eyes, their innocence and esprit^ dates from 
about his marriage. They are all, as it were, after her, 
— her sisters ; and as she grew more matronly, she may 
still be traced in her mature comeliness and motherly 
charms. Much of his sketches and their dramatic point 
are personal experience, as in " Mr. Briggs has a Slate 
off his House, and the Consequences." He was not, as 
indeed might be expected, what is called a funny man. 
Such a man was Albert Smith, whose absolute levity 
and funniness became ponderous, serious, and dreary, the 
crackling of thorns under the pot. Leech had melan- 
choly in his nature, especially in his latter years, when 
the strain of incessant production and work made his fine 
organization super-sensitive and apprehensive of coming 
evil. It was about a year before his death, when in the 
hunting-field, that he first felt that terrible breast-pang, 
the last agony of which killed him, as he fell into his fa- 
ther's arms ; while a child's party, such as he had often 



JOHN LEECH. 29 

been inspired by, and given to us, was in the house. 
Probably he had by some strain, or sudden muscular 
exertion, injured the mechanism of his heart. We all 
remember the shock of his death: how every one felt 
bereaved, — felt poorer, — felt something gone that noth- 
ing could replace, — some one that no one else could 
follow. 

What we owe to him of wholesome, hearty mirth and 
pleasure, and of something better, good as they are, than 
either, — purity, affection, pluck, humor, kindliness, good 
humor, good feeling, good breeding, the love of nature, 
of one another, of truth, — the joys of children, the love- 
liness of our homely English fields, with their sunsets and 
village spires, their glimpses into the pure infinite beyond, 
— the sea and all its fulness, its waves " curling their 
monstrous heads and hanging them," their crisping smiles 
on the sunlit sands, — all that variety of nature and of 
man which is only less infinite than its Maker ; something 
of this, and of that mysterious quality called humor, that 
fragrance and flavor of the soul, which God has given us 
to cheer our lot, to help us to " take heart and hope, and 
steer right onward," to have our joke, that lets us laugh 
at and make game of ourselves when we have little else 
to laugh at or play with, — of that which gives us when 
we will the silver lining of the cloud, and paints a rain- 
bow on the darkened sky out of our own " troublous 
tears"; — something of all these has this great and sim- 
ple-hearted, hard-working artist given to us and to our 
children, as a joy and a possession forever. Let us be 
grateful to him, let us give him our best honor, affection, 
and regard. 

Mr. Leech was tall, strongly but delicately made, grace- 
ful, long-limbed, with a grave, handsome face, a sensitive, 



so JOHN LEECH. 

gentle mouth, but a mouth that could be " set," deep, 
penetrating eyes, an open, high, and broad forehead, 
exquisitely modelled. He looked like his works, — nim- 
ble, vigorous, and gentle ; open, and yet reserved ; seeing 
everything, saying not much ; capable of heartiest mirth, 
but generally quiet. Once at one of John Parry's won- 
derful performances, "Mrs. Roseleaf's Tea-party," when 
the whole house was in roars, Leech's rich laughter was 
heard topping them all. There are, as far as we know, 
only two photographs of him : one — very beautiful, like 
a perfect English gentleman — by Silvy ; the other more 
robust and homely, but very good, by Caldesi. We hope 
there is a portrait of him by his devoted friend Millais, 
whose experience and thoughts of his worth as a man 
and as an artist one would give a good deal to have. 

When Thackeray wrote the notice of his sketches in 
The Times^ Leech was hugely delighted, — rejoiced in it 
like a child, and said, " That 's like putting £ 1,000 in my 
pocket." With all the temptations he had to Club life, 
he never went to the Garrick to spend the evenings, ex- 
cept on the Saturdays, which he never missed. On Sun- 
day afternoons, in summer, Thackeray and he might often 
be seen regaling themselves with their fellow-creatures 
in the Zoological Gardens, and making their own queer 
observations, to which, doubtless, we are indebted for our 
baby hippopotamus and many another four-footed joke. 
He never would go to houses where he knew he was 
asked only to be seen and trotted out. He was not a 
frequenter of Mrs, Leo Hunter's at homes. 

We now give a few typical woodcuts. It is impossible, 
from the size of our page, to give any of the larger, and 
often more complete and dramatic drawings. We hope 



JOHN LEECH. 31 

ours will send everybody to the volumes themselves. 
There should immediately be made, so long as it is pos- 
sible, a complete collection of his works; and a noble 
monument to industry and honest work, as well as genius 
and goodness, it would be. We begin with the British 
Lion : — 




THE STATE OF THE NATION. — DISRAELI MEASURING THE 
BRITISH LION. 

This is from a large Cartoon, but we have only space 
for the British Lion's head. He is dressed as a farm 
laborer. He has his hat and a big stick in his hand, and 
his tail innocently draggling under his smock-frock, which 
has the usual elaborate needlework displayed. Disraeli, 
who is taking his measure for rehabilitating the creature, 
is about a third shorter, and we would say six times 
lighter. 

What a leonine simpleton! What a visage! How 
much is in it, and how much not ! Look at his shirt col- 
lar and chubby cheek ! What hair ! copious and rank as 
the son of Manoah's, each particular hair growing straight 
out into space, and taking its own noway particular way ; 
his honest, simple eyes, well apart; his snub, infantile 
nose ; his long upper lip, unreclaimed as No-man's-land, 
or the Libyan desert, unstubbed as " Thornaby Waaste " ; 



32 



JOHN LEECH. 



his mouth closed, and down at the corner, partly from 
stomach in discontent (Giles is always dyspeptic), partly 
from contempt of the same. He is submitting to be 
measured and taken advantage of behind his back by his 
Semitic brother. He will submit to this and much more, 
but not to more than that. He draws his line like other 
people, when it occurs to him ; and he keeps his line, and 
breaks yours if you don't look to it. 

He may be kicked over, and take it mildly, smiling, it 
may be, as if he ought somehow to take it well, though 
appearances are against it. You may even knock him 
down, and he gets up red and flustered, and with his 
hands among his hair, and his eyes rounder and brighter, 
and his mouth more linear, his one leg a little behind the 
other ; but if you hit him again, calling him a liar or a 
coward, or his old woman no better than she should be, 
then he means mischief, and is at it and you. For he is 
like Judah, a true lion's whelp. Let us be thankful he is 
so gentle, and can be so fierce and stanch. 




Did you ever see such a wind ? How it is making 



JOHN LEECH. 33 

game of everything ; how everything scuds ! Look at 
his whiskers. Look at the tail of his descending friend's 
horse. Look at another's precursory " Lincoln and Ben- 
nett" bowling along! Look at his horse's head, — the 
jaded but game old mare ; the drawing of her is exqui- 
site ; indeed, there is no end of praising his horses. They 
are all different, and a dealer could tell you their ages 
and price, possibly their pedigree. 

There is a large woodcut in the Illustrated London 
News (any one who has it should frame it, and put the 
best plate-glass over it) ; it is called " Very Polite. The 
party on the gray, having invited some strangers to lunch, 
shows them the nearest way (by half a mile) to his 
house." The " party " is a big English squire — sixteen 
stone at least — with the handsome, insolent face of many 
of his tribe, and the nose of William the Conqueror. He 
has put the gray suddenly and quite close to a hurdle- 
fence, that nobody but such a man would face, and noth- 
ing but such blood and bone could take. He is returning 
from a "run," and is either ashamed of his guests, and 
wants to tail them off, or would like to get home and tell 
his wife that " some beggars " are coming to lunch ; or it 
may be merely of the nature of a sudden lark, for the 
escape of his own and his gray's unsatisfied '* go." The 
gray is over it like a bird. The drawing of this horse is 
marvellous ; it is an action that could only last a fraction 
of a second, and yet the artist has taken it. Observe the 
group in the road of the astounded " strangers." There 
is the big hulking, sulky young cornet, " funking," as it 
is technically called ; our friend Tom Noddy behind 
him, idiotic and ludicrous as usual, but going to go at it 
like a man such as he is, — the wintry elms, the big 
hedger at his work on his knees,' — all done to the quick. 
2* c 



34 



JOHN LEECH. 



But the finest bit of all is the eye of the mare. She 
knows well it is a short cut home ; and her cheery, fear- 
less, gentle eye is keenly fixed, not on where she is about 
to land, — that 's all right, — but on the distance, probably 
her own stable belfry. This woodcut is very valuable, 
and one of the largest he ever did. 

How arch! how lovely! how maidenly in this their 
" sweet hour of prime " the two conspirators are ! What 
a clever bit of composition ! how workmanlike the rustic 




seat! how jauntily the approaching young swells are 
bearing down upon them, keeping time with their long 
legs ! you know how they will be chaffing all together 
in a minute ; what ringing laughs ! 




35 



" And jocund day- 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops." 

And is not she a jocund morn ? day is too old for her. 
She is in " the first garden of her simpleness," — in " the 
innocent brightness of her new-born day." How plumb 
she stands ! How firm these dainty heels ! — leaning 
forward just a little on the wind; her petticoat, a mere 
hint of its wee bit of scolloped work, done by herself, 
doubtless ; the billowy gown ; the modest little soupgon 
of the white silk stockings, anybody else would have 
shown none, or too much ; the shadow of puffing papa 
approaching to help her down ; the wonderful sense of 
air and space. The only thing we question is. Would 
papa's hat's shadow show the rim across, instead of only 
at the sides ? 



36 



JOHN LEECH. 




BIT FROM THE MINING DISTRICTS. 



First " Wnt tak* thy quoat off, then ! Oi tell thee oi'm as good 
a mon as thee! ** 

Second. "Thee a mon! Whoy, thou be'est only walkin* aboot to 
save thy funeral expenses." 

This belongs to a set of drawings made when down in 
Staffordshire, his wife's county. They are all full of sav- 
age strength. They show how little he drew from fancy, 
and how much from nature, memory, and invention proper, 
which, as does also true imagination, postulate a founda- 
. tion in materials and fact. A mere Cockney, — whose 
idea of a rough was that of a London ruffian, — would 
have put Staffordshire clothes on the Bill Sykes he may 
have seen in the flesh or more likely on the stage, and 
that would be all : Leech gives you the essence, the 
clothes, and the county. Look at these two fellows, bru- 



JOHN LEECH. 



37 



tal as their own bull-dogs and as stanch, — having their 
own virtues too, in a way, — what a shoulder, what a 
deltoid and biceps ! the upper man developed largely by 
generations of arm work, the legs well enough, but not 
in proportion, — their education having been neglected. 
Contrast these men with Leech's Highlandmen in Briggs' 
Salmon and Grouse Adventures : there matters are re- 
versed, because so are the conditions of growth. A Staf- 
fordshire upper-man on Rannoch or Liddesdale legs 
would be an ugly customer. Observe the pipe fallen 
round from the mouth's action in speaking, and see how 
•the potteries are indicated by the smoking brick cupola. 




This is delicious ! What comic vis ! Pluck and per- 
spiration ! bewilderment and bottom ! He '11 be at it 
again presently, give him time. This is only one of the 
rounds, and the boot-hooks are ready for the next. Look 
at the state of his back-hair, his small, determined eye ! 
the braces burst with the stress ! The affair is being done 
in some remote, solitary room. The hat is ready, look- 



38 



JOHN LEECH. 



ing at him, and so are the spurs and the other boot, stand- 
ing bolt upright and impossible ; but he '11 do it ; apo- 
plexy and asphyxia may be imminent ; but doubtless 
these are the very boots he won the steeplechase in. A 
British lion this too, not to be " done," hating that Mte of 
a word " impossible " as much as Bonaparte did, and as 
Briggs does him. We have an obscure notion, too, that 
he has put the wrong foot into the boot ; never mind. 

The character of Mr, Briggs, throughout all predica- 
ments in Punchy is, we think, better sustained, more real, 
more thoroughly respectable and comic, than even Mr. 
Pickwick's. Somehow, though the latter worthy is al- 
ways very delightful and like himself when he is with 
us, one does n't know what becomes of him the rest of 
the day ; and if he was asked to he, we fear he could n't 
live through an hour, or do anything for himself. He is 
for the stage. Briggs is a man you have seen, — he is a 
man of business, of sense, and energy ; a good husband 
and citizen, a true Briton and Christian, peppery, gener- 
ous, plucky, obstinate, faithful to his spouse and bill ; 
only he has this craze about hunting and sport in general. 




This is from the Little Tour in Ireland, in which, by 



JOHN LEECH. 39 

the by, is one of the only two drawings he ever made of 
himself, — at page 141 ; it is a back view of him, riding 
with very short stirrups a rakish Irish pony ; he is in the 
Gap of Dunloe, and listening to a barefooted master of 
blarney. The other likeness is in a two-page Cartoon, — 
" Mr. Punch's Fancy Ball," January, 1847. In the or- 
chestra are the men on the Punch staff at the time. The 
first on the left is Mayhew, playing the cornet, then Per- 
cival Leigh the double bass, Gilbert A' Beckett the violin, 
Doyle the clarionette. Leech next playing the same, — 
tall, handsome, and nervous, — Mark Lemon, the editor, 
as conductor, appealing to the fell Jerrold to moderate 
his bitter transports on the drum. Mooning over all is 
Thackeray, — big, vague, childlike, — playing on the 
piccolo ; and Tom Taylor earnestly pegging away at the 
piano. What a change from such a fancy to this sunset 
and moonrise on the quiet, lonely Connemara Bay, — 
nothing living is seen but the great winged sea-bird flap- 
ping his way home, close to the " charmed wave." The 
whole scene radiant, sacred, and still ; " the gleam, the 
shadow, and the peace supreme." The man who could 
feel this, and make us feel it, had the soul and the hand 
of a great painter. 



40 



JOHN LEECH. 




A MORAL LESSON FROM THE NURSERY. 

Arthur. Do you know, Freddy, that we are only made of dust? 

Freddy. Are we ? Then I 'm sure we ought to be very careful 
how we pitch into each other so, for fear we might crumble each 
other all to pieces. 

This speaks for itself. Nobody needs to be told which 
is Freddy ; and you see the book from which Arthur got 
his views of genesis and the mystery of being ; and the 
motherly, tidy air of the beds ! Freddy's right thumb in 
his belt; the artistic use of that mass of white beyond 
his head ; the drawing of his right sole ; the tremendous 
bit of theology in that " only," — do any of us know much 
more about it now than does Arthur ? — only surely no- 



JOHN LEECH. 41 

body would now say, according to Pet Marjory's brother, 
that our Arthur, as he now sits, clean and caller, all 
tucked up in his night-gown, — made of soft cotton, thick 
and (doubtless) tweeled, — and ready for any amount of 
discussion, is only " dirt." * 

We have said he was greater in humor than in carica- 
ture or even satire, and, like all true humorists, he had 
the tragic sense and power ; for as is the height so is 
the depth, as is the mirth so is the melancholy ; Loch 
Lomond is deepest when Ben dips into it. Look at 
this. Mr. Merryman and his dead wife, — there is 

* This "word, in conjunction with children, brings into our mind a 
joke which happened to Dr. Norman M'Leod, and which he tells as 
only he can tell his own stories. He was watching some barelegged 
Glasgow street children who were busied in a great mud-work in the 
kennel. "What's that?" said he, stooping down. "It's a kirk," 
said they, never looking up. "Where's the door?" "There's the 
door," points a forefinger, that answers young Fleming's account of 
the constitution of man. "Where's the steeple?" "There's the 
steeple," — a defunct spunk slightly off the perpendicular. " Where 's 
the poopit? " " There 's the poopit," said the biggest, his finger mak- 
ing a hole in a special bit of clay he had been fondly rounding in his 
palms. " And where 's the minister ? " " 0, ye see," looking as vacant 
as a congregation in such circumstances should, and as the hole did 
when he withdrew his finger, " OuWe run oot o' dirV ; but jumping up, 
and extinguishing for the time, with his bare foot, the entire back gal- 
lery, he exclaims, " There 's Airchie comin', he 's got a bit." Airchie 
soon converted his dirt into a minister, who was made round, and put 
into his hole, the gallery repaired, and the "call" vociferously unan- 
imous and "sustained." Wouldn't that jovial piece of professional 
" dirt " chew his cud of droll fancies as he walked off, from the fall of 
man to the Aberdeen Act, and the entire subject of dirt. 

" Where did Adam fall ? " said his kindly old minister to " Wee 
Peter" at the examination. "Last nicht, at the close-mooth, sir'* 
(Adam, like his old namesake, was in the way of frequenting a certain 
forbidden tree, his was " The Lemon Tree," — it was in Aberdeen), 
"and he's a' glaur yet," (glaur being Scottice et Scotoi-um, wet dirt.) 
" Ay, ay, my wee man," said the benevolent Calvinist, patting his 
head, " he 's a' glaur yet, — he 's a' glaur yet." 



JOHN LEECH. 




nothing in Hogarth more tragic and more true. It is a 
travelling circus ; its business at its height ; the dying wo- 
man has just made a glorious leap through the papered 
hoop ; the house is still ringing with the applause ; she 
fell and was hurt cruelly ; but, saying nothing, crept into 
this caravan room ; she has been prematurely delivered, 
and is now dead ; she had been begging her Bill to come 
near her, and to hear her last words ; Bill has kissed her, 
taken her to his heart, — and she is gone. Look into 
this bit of misery and nature; look at her thin face, 
white as the waning moon 

" Stranded on the pallid shore of morn " ; 

the women's awe-stricken, pitiful looks (the great Gomer- 
sal, with his big blue-black unwhiskered cheek, his heavy 
moustache, his business-like, urgent thumb, — even he is 



JOHN LEECH. 43 

being solemnized and hushed) ; the trunk pulled out for 
the poor baby's clothes, secretly prepared at by-hours 
by the poor mother ; the neatly mended tear in Mary's 
frock ; the coronet, the slippers, the wand with its glitter- 
ing star ; the nearness of the buzzing multitude ; the 
dignity of death over the whole. We do not know who 
" S. H." is, who tells, with his strong simplicity, the 
story of " The Queen of the Arena," — it is in the first 
volume of Once a Weeh^ — but we can say nothing less 
of it than that it is worthy of this woodcut ; it must have 
been true. Here, too, as in all Leech's works, there is a 
manly sweetness, an overcoming of evil by good, a gen- 
tleness that tames the anguish ; you find yourself tak- 
ing off your shoes, and bow as in the presence of the 
Supreme, — who gives, who takes away, — who restores 
the lost.* 

* We remember many years ago, in St. Andrews, on the fair-day 
in September, standing before a show, where some wonderful tum- 
bling and music and dancing was being done. It was called by way of 
The Tempest^ a ballet, and Miranda was pirouetting away all glorious 
with her crown and rouge and tinsel. She was young, with dark, wild, 
rich ej^es and hair, and shapely, tidy limbs. The Master of ceremonies, 
a big fellow of forty, with an honest, merry face, was urging the young 
lady to do her best, when suddenly I saw her start, and thought I 
heard a child's cry in the midst of the rough music. She looked 
eagerly at the big man, who smiled, made her jump higher than ever, 
at the same time winking to some one within. Up came the bewitch- 
ing Ferdinand^ glorious, too, but old and ebriose ; and under cover of 
a fresh round of cheers from the public, Miranda vanished. Presently 
the cry stopped, and the big man smiled again, and thumped his drum 
more fiercely. I stepped out of the crowd, and getting to the end of 
the caravan, peered through a broken panel. There was our gum- 
flower-crowned Miranda sitting beside a cradle, on an old regimen- 
tal drum, with her baby at her breast. how lovely, how blessed, 
how at peace they looked, how all in all to each other ! and the fat 
handy-pandy patting its plump, snowy, unfailing friend; it was like 
Hagar and young Ishmael by themselves. I learned that the big man 
was her husband, and used her well in his own gruflf way. 



44 JOHN LEECH. 

We end as we began, by being thankful for our gift of 
laughter, and for our makers of the same, for the pleas- 
ant joke, for the mirth that heals and heartens, and 
never wounds, that assuages and diverts. This, like all 
else, is a gift from the Supreme Giver, to be used as 
not abused, to be kept in its proper place, neither de- 
spised nor estimated and cultivated overmuch ; for it has 
its perils as well as its pleasures, and it is not always, 
as in this case, on the side of truth and virtue, modesty 
and sense. If you wish to know from a master of the 
art what are the dangers of giving one's self too much up 
to the comic view of things, how it demoralizes the whole 
man, read what we have already earnestly commended 
to you, Sydney Smith's two lectures, in which there is 
something quite pathetic in the earnestness with which he 
speaks of the snares and the degradations that mere wit, 
comicality, and waggery bring upon the best of men. 
We end with his concluding words : — 

" I have talked of the danger of wit and humor : I do 
not mean by that to enter into commonplace declama- 
tion against faculties because they, are dangerous. Wit 
is dangerous, eloquence is dangerous, a talent for obser- 
vation is dangerous, every thing is dangerous that has 
efficacy and vigor for its characteristics ; nothing is safe 
but mediocrity. The business is in conducting the under- 
standing well, to risk something ; to aim at uniting things 
that are commonly incompatible. The meaning of an 
extraordinary man is, that he is eight men, not one man ; 
that he has as much wit as if he had no sense, and as 
much sense as if he had no wit ; that his conduct is as 
judicious as if he were the dullest of human beings, and 
his imagination as brilliant as if he were irretrievably 
ruined. But when wit is combined with sense and in- 



JOHN LEECH. 45 

formation ; when it is softened by benevolence, and re- 
strained by strong principle ; when it is in the hands of 
a man who can use it and despise it, who can be witty 
and something much better than witty, who loves honor, 
justice, decency, good-nature, morality, and religion ten 
thousand times better than wit, — wit is then a beautiful 
and delightful part of our nature. There is no more in- 
teresting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the 
different characters of men ; than to observe it expanding 
caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldness, — teaching 
age and care and pain to smile, — extorting reluctant 
gleams of pleasure from melancholy, and charming even 
the pangs of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it pene- 
trates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, 
gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the 
combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad 
heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent 
wit and humor like this is surely the jlavor of the mind! 
Man could direct his ways by plain reason^ and support 
his life by tasteless food ; but God has given us wit, and 
flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to 
enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to ' charm his 
pained steps over the burning marie, ^ " 



SOME OF THE WORKS ILLUSTRATED BY LEECH. 

1. Etchings and Sketchings. By A. Pen, Esq. 

2. Sketches contributed to Bell's Life. 

3. The Fiddle-Faddle Fashion Book. 

4. Parody in Lithograph of Mulready's Post-Office Envelope. 

5. The Children of the Mobihty. 

6. The Comic Latin Grammar. By Perceval Leigh. Illustrated 

by Leech. 



46 JOHN LEECH. 

7. The Comic English Grammar. By the Same. 

8. Bentley's Miscellany. For many years. Profuse Illustrations. 

9. The Marchioness de Brinvilliers. By Albert Smith and Leech. 

10. The Adventures of Jack Ledbury. By Albert Smith and Leech. 

11. Blaine's Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports. 

12. Ballads. By Bon Gualtier. 

13. Puck on Pegasus. 

14. The Militiaman Abroad. 

15. Christopher Tadpole. 

16. Paul' s Dashes of American Humor. 

17. Seeley's Porcelain Tower. 

18. Christmas Numbers of the London Illustrated News. 

19. The Quizziology of the British Drama. By G. A. A'Beckett. 

20. The Story of a Feather. By Douglas Jerrold. 

21. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures. 

22. Life of a Foxhound. By John Mills. 

23. Crock of Gold, etc. 

24. Colin Clink. 

25. The Book of British Song. 

26. Stanley Thorn. 

27. Jack Hinton. 

28. Punch's Pocket-Book. Up to 1864. Etchings and small woodcuts. 

29. Douglas Jerrold's Collected Works. 

30. The Earlier Volumes of Once a Week. 

31. Jack Brag. By Theodore Hook. 

32. Journey to Pau. By Hon. Erskine Murray. 

33. The Month. By Albert Smith. 

34. The Rising Generation: A Series of Twelve Large Colored Plates. 

35. The Comic Cocker. 

36. Young Troublesome. 

37. The Comic History of England. Etchings and woodcuts. 

38. The Comic History of Rome. Etchings and woodcuts. 

39. Handley Cross. 

40. Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour. 

41. Ask Mamma. 

42. Plain or Ringlets. 

43. Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds. 

44. A little Tour in Ireland. By an Oxonian. 

45. Master Jacky in Love ; A Sequel to Young Troublesome. 

46. The Christmas Carol. By Charles Dickens. 

47. The Cricket on the Hearth. By Charles Dickens. 

48. The Chimes. By Charles Dickens. 

49. Punch from 1841. 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 




[Note. — The separate publication of this sketch was forced 
upon me by the " somewhat free use " made of it in a second and 
thereby enlarged edition of the " little book " to which I owe my 
introduction to Marjorie Fleming, — but nothing more, — a " use " 
so exceedingly " free " as to extend almost to everything with 
which I had ventured perhaps to encumber the letters and jour- 
nals of that dear child. To be called " kind and genial " by the 
individual who devised this edition has, strange as he may think 
it, altogether failed to console me. Empty praise without the 
solid pudding is proverbially a thing of naught ; but what shall 
we say of praise the emptiness of which is aggravated not merely 
by the absence, but by the actual abstraction of the pudding ? 

This little act of conveyancing — this " engaging compilation," 
as he would have called it — puts me in mind of that pleasant joke 
in the preface to " Essays by Mr. Goldsmith " : "I would desire 
in this case to imitate that fat man whom I have somewhere heard 
of in a shipwreck, who, when the sailors, pressed by famine, were 
taking slices from his body, to satisfy their hunger, insisted, with 
great justice, on having the first cut for himself." 

J. B.] 



To 

MISS FLEMING, 

To whom I am indebted for all its Materials^ 
THIS MEMORIAL 

OF HER DEAR AND UNFORGOTTEN 

MAIDIE 
Is gratefully inscribed. 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 




NE November afternoon in 1810 — the year 
in which Waverley was resumed and laid aside 
again, to be finished off, its last two volumes 
in three weeks, and made inmiortal in 1814, 
and when its author, by the death of Lord Melville, nar- 
rowly escaped getting a civil appointment in India — 
three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen es- 
caping like school-boys from the Parliament House, and 
speeding arm-in-arm down Bank Street and the Mound, 
in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet. 

The three friends sought the hield of the low wall old 
Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes miss now, 
as they struggle with the stout west wind. 

The three were curiously unlike each other. One, " a 
little man of feeble make, who would be unhappy if his 
pony got beyond a foot pace," slight, with " small, elegant 
features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, the index of 
the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the warm 
heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of 
her weaknesses." Another, as unlike a woman as a man 
can be ; homely, almost common, in look and figure ; his 
hat and his coat, and indeed his entire covering, worn to 
the quick, but all of the best material ; what redeemed 
him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep 



52 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

set, heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slum- 
bering glow far in, as if they could be dangerous ; a man 
to care nothing for at first glance, but somehow, to give a 
second and not-forgetting look at. The third was the 
biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all 
rough and alive with power; had you met him any- 
where else, you would say he was a Liddesdale store- 
farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt carle," 
as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and 
the eye of a man of the hills, — a large, sunny, out- 
of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat 
stooping shoulders, was set that head which, with Shake- . 
speare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the 
world. 

He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and 
himself in roars of laughter, and every now and then 
seizing them, and stopping, that they might take their fill 
of the fun ; there they stood shaking with laughter, " not 
an inch of their body free" from its grip. At George 
Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. An- 
drew's Church, one to Albany Street, the other, our big 
and hmping friend, to Castle Street. 

We need hardly give their names. The first was Wil- 
liam Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of 
the world by a calumny, killed by its foul breath, — 

" And at the touch of wrong, without a strife, 
Slipped in a moment out of life." 

There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more 
pathetic than Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of 
his youth. 

The second was William Clerk, — the Darsie Latimer 
of Redgauntlet ; " a man," as Scott says, " of the most 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 55 

acute intellects and powerful apprehension," but of more 
powerful indolence, so as to leave the world with little 
more than the report of what he might have been, — 
a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely 
Swiftian as his brother, Lord Eldin, neither of whom 
had much of that commonest and best of all the humors, 
called good. 

The third we all know. What has he not done for 
every one of us? Who else ever, except Shakespeare, 
so diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a world 
so liberally, so wholesomely ? We are fain to say, not 
even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diver- 
sion, something higher than pleasure, and yet who would 
care to split this hair ? 

Had any one watched him closely before and after the 
parting, what a change he would see ! The bright, broad 
laugh, the shrewd, jovial word, the man of the Parliament 
House and of the world ; and next step, moody, the light 
of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were invis- 
ible ; his shut mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, so 
innocent, so sad ; he was now all within, as before he was 
all without ; hence his brooding look. As the snow blat- 
tered in his face, he muttered, " How it raves and drifts ! 
On-ding o' snaw, — ay, that 's the word, — on-ding — ". 
He was now at his own door, " Castle Street, No. 39." 
He opened the door, and went straight to his den ; that 
wondrous workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he 
was fifty-two, he wrote Peveril of the Peak^ Quentin Dur- 
ward, and St, Ronan's Well, besides much else. We 
once took the foremost of our novelists, the greatest, we 
would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but 
mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great 
magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon 



B4 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

that little shabby bit of sky and that back green, where 
faithful Camp lies.^ 

He sat down in his large green morocco elbow-chair, 
drew himself close to his table, and glowered and 
gloomed at his writing apparatus, " a very handsome old 
box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and con- 
taining ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole 
in such order, that it might have come from the silver- 
smith's window half an hour before." He took out his 
paper, then starting up angrily, said, " ^ Go spin, you 
jade, go spin.' No, d— it, it won't do, — 

' My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff, 
The rock o't wunna stand, sir, 
To keep the temper-pin in tiff 
Employs ower aft my hand, sir.' 

I am off the fang.f I can make nothing of Waverley to- 
day ; I '11 awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you 
thief." The great creature rose slowly, and the pair were 
off, Scott taking a maud (a plaid) with him. " White 
as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo ! " said he, when he got 
to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the 
snow, and his master strode across to Young Street, and 
through it to 1 North Charlotte Street, to the house of his 
dear friend, Mrs. William Keith, of Corstorphine Hill, 
niece of Mrs. Keith, of Ravelston, of whom he said at her 
death, eight years after, " Much tradition, and that of the 

* This favorite dog " died about January, 1809, and was buried in a 
fine moonlight night in the little garden behind the house in Castle 
Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family in tears 
about the grave as her father himself smoothed the turf above Camp, 
with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to dine 
abroad that day, but apologized, on account of the death of * a dear old 
friend.' " — Lockhart's Life of Scott 

t Applied to a pump when it is dry, and its valve has lost its 
*'fang"; from the German /a^^ew, to hold. 



MARJORIE FLEMNG. 55 

best, has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few- 
persons whose spirits and cleanliness and freshness of 
mind and body made old age lovely and desirable." 

Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and 
had a key, so in he and the hound went, shaking them- 
selves in the lobby. " Marjorie ! Marjorie ! " shouted 
her friend, " where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin doo ? " 
In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his 
arms, and he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. 
Keith. " Come yer ways in, Wattie." " No, not now. 
I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may come 
to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn 
home in your lap." ** Tak' Marjorie, and it on-ding o' 
snaw ! " said Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, " On-ding, 
— that 's odd, — that is the very word." " Hoot, awa ! 
look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made 
to hold lambs, (the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of 
two breadths sewed together, and uncut at one end, mak- 
ing a poke or cul de sac), "Tak' yer lamb," said she, 
laughing at the contrivance, and so the Pet was first well 
happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the plaid 
neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb, — Maida 
gambolling through the snow, and running races in her 
mirth. 

Did n't he face " the angry airt," and make her bield 
his bosom, and into his own room with her, and lock the 
door, and out with the warm, rosy, little wifie, who took 
it all with great composure ! There the two remained 
for three or more hours, making the house ring with their 
laughter ; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's 
laugh. Having made the fire cheery, he set her down in 
his ample chair, and standing sheepishly before her, be- 
gan to say his lesson, which happened to be, — " Ziccotty, 



56 MARJOKIE FLEMING. 

diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock 
struck wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." 
This done repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him 
his new lesson, gravely and slowly, timing it upon her 
«mall fingers, — he saying it after her, — 

" Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven; 
Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven; 
Pin, pan, musky, dan; 
Tweedle-um, twoddle-um, 
Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie, 
You, are, out." 

He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him 
with most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He 
used to say that when he came to Alibi Crackaby he 
broke down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan, Tweedle-um 
Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said 
Mushy-Dan especially was beyond endurance, bringing 
up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the Spice Islands 
and odoriferous Ind ; she getting quite bitter in her dis- 
pleasure at his ill-behavior and stupidness. 

Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious 
way, the two getting wild with excitement over Gil Mor- 
rice or the Baron of Smailholm ; and he would take her 
on his knee, and make her repeat Constance's speeches 
in King John^ till he swayed to and fro, sobbing his fill. 
Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed, re- 
peating, — 

" For I am sick, and capable of fears. 
Oppressed with wrong, and therefore full of fears ; 
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears; 
A woman, naturally born to fears." 

" If thou that bidst me be content, wert grim, 
Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb, 
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious — ". 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 57 

Or, drawing herself up " to the height of her great 

argument," — 

" I will instruct my sorrows to be proud, 
For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout. 
Here I and sorrow sit." 

Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power 
over him, saying to Mrs. Keith, " She 's the most extraor- 
dinary creature I ever met with, and her repeating of 
Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does." 

Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who 
has much of the sensibility and fun of her who has been 
in her small grave these fifty and more years, we have 
now before us the letters and journals of Pet Marjorie, 

— before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright 
and sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, 
" Cut out in her last illness," and two pictures of her by 
her beloved Isabella, whom she worshipped ; there are 
the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which 
her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured 
themselves ; there is the old water-mark, " Lingard, 1808." 
The two portraits are very like each other, but plainly 
done at different times ; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep- 
set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on within 
as to gather in all the glories from without ; quick with 
the wonder and the pride of life ; they are eyes that would 
not be soon satisfied with seeing ; eyes that would devour 
their object, and yet childlike and fearless ; and that is a 
mouth that will not be soon satisfied with love ; it has a 
curious likeness to Scott's own, which has always ap- 
peared to us his sweetest, most mobile and speaking 
feature. 

There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him, 

— fearless and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy's 

3* 



58 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

child. One cannot look at it without thinking of Words- 
worth's lines on poor Hartley Coleridge : — 

" blessed vision, happy child ! 
Thou art so exquisitely wild, 
I thought of thee with many fears, 
Of what might be thy lot in future years. 
I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, 
Lord of thy house and hospitality ; 
And Grief, uneasy lover! ne'er at rest, 
But when she sat within the touch of thee. 
Oh, too industrious folly ! 
Oh, vain and causeless melancholy I 
Nature will either end thee quite, 
Or, lengthening out thy season of delight 
Preserve for thee by individual right, 
A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock." 

And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, 
plump little playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately 
friend's lines : — 

" Loving she is, and tractable, though wild, 
And Innocence hath privilege in her. 
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes. 
And feats of cunning ; and the pretty round 
Of trespasses, affected to provoke 
Mock chastisement and partnership in play. 
And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth. 
Not less if unattended and alone. 
Than when both young and old sit gathered round, 
And take delight in its activity. 
Even so this happy creature of herself 
Is all-sufficient ; solitude to her 
Is blithe society ; she fills the air 
With gladness and involuntary songs." 

But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly 
say that all this is true, and that these letters are as really 
Marjorie's as was this light brown hair ; indeed, you could 
as easily fabricate the one as the other. 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 59 

There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who was 
forty years in' her grandfather's family. Majorie Flem- 
ing, or, as she is called in the letters, and by Sir Walter, 
Maidie, was the last child she kept. Jeanie's wages 
never exceeded £3 a year, and, when she left service, she 
had saved £ 40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, 
rather despising and ill-using her sister Isabella, — a beau- 
tiful and gentle child. This partiality made Maidie apt 
at times to domineer over Isabella. " I mention this " 
(writes her surviving sister) " for the purpose of telling 
you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only 
five years old, when walking in Raith grounds, the two 
children had run on before, and old Jeanie remembered 
they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade. She 
called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, 
rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have been 
lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving her life, 
but tearinor her clothes. Jeanie flew on Isabella to ' ^ive 
it her' for spoiling her favorite's dress ; Maidie rushed in 
between, crying out, ' Pay (whip) Maidjie as much as you 
like, and I '11 not say one word ; but touch Isy, and I '11 
roar like a bull ! ' Years after Maidie was resting in her 
grave, my mother used to take me to the place, and told 
•the story always in the exact same words." This Jeanie 
must have been a character. She took great pride in 
exhibiting Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquire- 
ments, when nineteen months old, to the officers of a mili- 
tia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This perform- 
ance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the 
little theologian was presented by them with a cap and 
feathers. Jeanie's glory was " putting him through the 
carritch" (catechism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the 
beginning with, " Wha made ye, ma bonnie man ? " For 



60 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

the correctness of this and the three next replies Jeanie 
had no anxiety, but the tone changed to menace, and the 
closed nieve (fist) was shaken in the child's face as she 
demanded, " Of what are you made ?" " Dirt," was the 
answer uniformly given. " Wull ye never learn to say 
dust^ ye thrawn deevil ? " with a cuff from the opened 
hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder. 

Here is Maidie's first letter before she was six. The 
spelling unaltered, and there are no " commoes." 

" My dear Isa, — I now sit down to answer all your 
kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to 
write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote a letter 
in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square 
and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull 
necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune a Lady of 
my acquaintance praises me dreadfully. I repeated some- 
thing out of Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for the 
stage, and you may think I w^as primmed up with majestick 
Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsay 
— birsay is a word which is a word that William com- 
posed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This 
horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beautifuU which 
is intirely impossible for that is not her nature." 

What a peppery little pen we wield ! What could that 
have been out of the Sardonic Dean ? what other child 
of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? 
This power of affection, this faculty of Moving, and wild 
hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She 
perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well — 
we know, indeed, that it was far better — for her that this 
wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its one only infi- 
nite Giver and Receiver. This must have been the law 
of her earthly life. Love was indeed "her Lord and 



MAR J OKIE FLEMING. 61 

King " ; and it was perhaps well for her that she found 
so soon that her and our only Lord and King Himself is 
Love. 

Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead : — "The 
day of my existence here has been delightful and enchant- 
ing. On Saturday I expected no less than three well 
made Bucks the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. 
Geo. Crakey (Craigie), and Wm. Keith and Jn. Keith — 
the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Cra- 
key and walked to Crakyhall (Craigiehall) hand in hand 
in Innocence and matitation (meditation) sweet thinking 
on the kind love which flows in our tender hearted mind 
which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was 
ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. 
Mr. Craky you must know is a great Buck and pretty 
good-looking. 

" I am at Eavelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The 
birds are singing sweetly — the calf doth frisk and nature 
shows her glorious face." 

Here is a confession : — "I confess I have been very 
more like a little young divil than a creature for when 
Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and my mul- 
tiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I 
stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she 
had made on the ground and was sulky and was dread- 
fully passionate, but she never whiped me but said 
Marjory go into another room and think what a great 
crime you are committing letting your temper git the 
better of you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got 
the better of me but she never never never whips me so 
that I think I would be the better of it and the next time 
that I behave ill I think she should do it for she never 
does it Isabella has given me praise for checking 



62 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

my temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling 
an hole hour teaching me to write." 

Our poor little wifie, she has no doubts of the person- 
ality of the Devil ! " Yesterday I behave extremely ill 
in God's most holy church for I would never attend my- 
self nor let Isabella attend which was a great crime for 
she often, often tells me that when to or three are geath- 
ered together God is in the midst of them, and it was the 
very same Divil that tempted Job that tempted me I am 
sure; but he resisted Satan though he had boils and 
many many other misfortunes which I have escaped. 
.... I am now going to tell you the horible and 
wretched plaege (plague) that my multiplication gives 
me you can't conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 
times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant en- 
dure." 

This is delicious ; and what harm is there in her 
"Devilish"? it is strong language merely; even old 
Rowland Hill used to say " he grudged the Devil those 
rough and ready words." " I walked to that delightful 
place Crakyhall with a delightful young man beloved by 
all his friends especially by me his loveress, but I must 
not talk any more about him for Isa said it is not proper 
for to speak of gentalmen but I will never forget him ! 
.... I am very very glad that satan has not given me 
boils and many other misfortunes — In the holy bible 
these words are written that the Devil goes like a roar- 
ing lyon in search of his pray but the lord lets us escape 
from him but we " {pauvre petite !) " do not strive with 

this awfull Spirit To-day I pronunced a word 

which should never come out of a lady's lips it was that 
I called John a Impudent Bitch. I will tell you what I 
think made me in so bad a humor is I got one or two of 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 63 

that bad bad sma (senna) tea to-day," — a better excuse 
for bad humor and bad language than most. 

She has been reading the Book of Esther : " It was a 
dreadful thing that Haman was hanged on the very gal- 
lows which he had prepared for Mordeca to hang him 
and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel 
to hang his sons for they did not commit the crime ; but 
then Jesus was not then come to teach us to be merciful^ 
This is wise and beautiful, — has upon it the very dew 
of youth and of holiness. Out of the mouths of babes 
and sucklings He perfects his praise. 

" This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because, I 
have play half the Day and I get money too but alas I 
owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned 2 pence whenever 
I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme 

colings nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc 

As this is Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and 
Religious subjects. First I should be very thankful I 
am not a begger." 

This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to 
have been all she was able for. 

" I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place. Brae- 
head by name, belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there 
is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine 
which is delightful. I think it is shocking to think that 
the dog and cat should bear them " (this is a meditation 
physiological), " and they are drowned after all. I would 
rather have a man-dog than a woman-dog, because they 
do not bear like women-dogs ; it is a hard case — it is 
shocking. I cam here to enjoy natures delightful breath 
it is sweeter than a fial (phial) of rose oil." 

Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison 
asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, " the gude- 



64 • MARJORIE FLEMING. 

man o' Ballengiecli," as a reward for the services of his 
flail when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig 
with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from 
that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and 
victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition 
of the possessor being ready to present the King with a 
ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having done this 
for his unknown king after the splore^ and when George 
the Fourth came to Edinburgh this ceremony was per- 
formed in silver at Holyrood. It is a lovely neuk this 
Braehead, preserved almost as it was two hundred years 
ago. " Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie, — two 
quaintly cropped yew-trees, — still thrive ; the burn runs 
as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune, — as 
much the same and as different as Now and Then, The 
house full of old family relics and pictures, the sun shin- 
ing on them through the small deep windows with their 
plate glass ; and there, blinking at the sun, and chatter- 
ing contentedly, as a parrot, that might, for its looks of 
eld, have been in the ark, and domineered over and 
deaved the dove. Everything about the place is old and 
fresh. 

This is beautiful : — " I am very sorry to say that I 
forgot God — that is to say I forgot to pray to-day and 
Isabella told me that I should be thankful that God did 
not forget me — if he did, O what become of me if I 
was in danger and God not friends with me — I must 
go to unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin — 
how could I resist it O no I will never do it again — no 
no — if I can help it." (Canny wee wifie !) "My re- 
ligion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so 
much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my 
charecter is lost among the Braehead people. I hope I 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 65 

will be religious again — but as for regaining my char- 
ecter I despare for it." (Poor little "habit and re- 
pute!") 

Her temper, her passion, and her "badness" are al- 
most daily confessed and deplored : — "I will never again 
trust to my own power, for I see that I cannot be good 
without God's assistance — I will not trust in my own 
selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me — it 
will indeed." " Isa has giving me advice, which is, that 
when I feal Satan beginning to tempt me, that I flea him 
and he would flea me." " Remorse is the worst thing to 
bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it." 

Poor dear little sinner ! — • Here comes the world again : 
" In my travels I met with a handsome lad named Charles 
Balfour Esq., and from him I got ofers of marage — 
offers of marage, did I say ? Nay plenty heard me." A 
fine scent for " breach of promise ! " 

This is abrupt and strong : — " The Divil is curced and 
all works. 'T is a fine work Newton on the profecies, I 
wonder if there is another book of poems comes near the 
Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight of the Bible." 
" Miss Potune " (her " simpliton " friend) " is very fat ; 
she pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a 
stone that dropt from the skies ; but she is a good Chris- 
tian." Here come her views on church government : — 
" An Annibabtist is a thing I am not a member of — I 
am a Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and" (O you 
little Laodicean and Latitudinarian !) " a Prisbeteran at 
Kirkcaldy ! " — (Blandula ! Vagula I ccelum et animum 
mutas quce trans mare (i. e. trans Bodotriam)'Curris !) — 
" my native town." " Sentiment is not what I am ac- 
quainted with as yet, though I wish it, and should like to 
practise it " (!) " I wish I had a great, great deal of 

£ 



66 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

gratitude in my heart, in all my body." "There is a 
new novel published, named Self - Control (Mrs. Brun- 
ton's) — "a very good maxim forsooth ! " This is shock- 
ing : " Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Bal- 
four, Esq., offered to kiss me, and offered to marry me, 
though the man " (a fine directness this !) " was espused, 
and his wife was present and said he must ask her per- 
mission ; but he did not. I think he was ashamed and 
confounded before 3 gentelman — Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. 
Kings." "Mr. Banester's" (Bannister's) "Budjet is 
to-night ; I hope it will be a good one. A great many 
authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally." 
You are right, Marjorie. " A Mr. Burns writes a beauti- 
ful song on Mr. Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him — 
truly it is a most beautiful one." " I like to read the 
Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin, Dickey, 
flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some 
were good birds and others bad, but Peccay was the 
most dutiful and obedient to her parients." " Thomson 
is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing to Shake- 
spear, of which I have a little knolege. Macbeth is a 
pretty composition, but awful one." " The Newgate Cal- 
ender is very instructive " (!) " A sailor called here to 
say farewell; it must be dreadful to leave his native 
country when he might get a wife ; or perhaps me, for I 
love him very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid me 
to speak about love." This antiphlogistic regimen and 
lesson is ill to learn by our Maidie, for here she sins 
again : " Love is a very papithatick thing " (it is almost 
a pity to correct this into pathetic), " as well as trouble- 
some and tiresome — but O Isabella forbid me to speak 
of it." Here are her reflections on a pine-apple: "I 
think the price of a pine-apple is very dear : it is a whole 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 67 

bright goulden guinea, that might have sustained a poor 
family." Here is a new vernal simile : " The hedges are 
sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly 
hatched or, as the vulgar say, clacked'* " Doctor Swift's 
works are very funny ; I got some of them by heart." 
'^ Moreheads sermons are I hear much praised, but I 
never read sermons of any kind ; but I read novelettes 
and my Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers." 
Bravo Marjorie! 

She seems now, when still about six, to have broken 
out into song : — 

"EPHIBOL (epigram or epitaph — WHO KNOWS WHICH?) ON 
MY DEAR LOVE ISABELLA. 

" Here lies sweet Isabell in bed, 
With a night-cap on her head ; 
Her skin is soft, her face is fair, 
And she has very pretty hair; 
She and I in bed lies nice. 
And undisturbed by rats or mice ; 
She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan, 
Though he plays upon the organ. 
Her nails are neat, her teeth are white, 
Her eyes are very, very bright ; 
In a conspicuous town she lives, 
And to the poor her money gives : 
Here ends sweet Isabella's story, 
And may it be much to her glory." 

Here are some bits at random : — 

" Of summer I am very fond, 
And love to bathe into a pond ; 
The look of sunshine dies away, . 
And will not let me out to play ; 
I love the morning's sun to spy 
Glittering through the casement's eye, 
The rays of light are very sweet. 
And puts away the taste of meat ; 
The balmy breeze comes down from heaven, 
And makes us like for to be living." 



68 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

" The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigan- 
tic crane, and the pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth 
holds a bucket of fish and water. Fighting is what 
ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not make a good 
figure in battle or in a duel. Alas ! we females are of 
little use to our country. The history of all the malcon- 
tents as ever was hanged is amusing." Still harping on 
the Newgate Calendar ! 

" Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the com- 
panie of swine, geese, cocks, etc., and they are the delight 
of my soul." 

"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A 
young turkie of 2 or 3 months old, would you believe it, 
the father broke its leg, and he killed another ! I think 
he ought to be transported or hanged." 

" Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes 
Street, for all the lads and lasses, besides bucks and beg- 
gars, parade there." 

" I should like to see a play very much, for I never 
saw one in all my life, and don't believe I ever shall ; but 
I hope I can be content without going to one. I can be 
quite happy without my desire being granted." 

" Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the tooth- 
ake, and she walked with a long night-shift at dead of 
night like a ghost, and I thought she was one. She 
prayed for nature's sweet restorer — balmy sleep — but 
did not get it — a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough 
to make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake 
from top to toe. Superstition is a very mean thing, and 
should be despised and shunned." 

Here is her weakness and her strength again : — "In the 
love-novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella 
will not allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 69 

't is too refined for my taste." " Miss Egward's (Edge- 
worth's) tails are very good, particularly some that are 
very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and 
Tarelton, False Keys, etc. etc." 

" Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country church- 
yard are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, 
particularly by the men." Are our Marjories now-a-days 
better or worse because they cannot read Tom Jones 
unharmed ? More better than worse ; but who among 
them can repeat Gray's Lines on a Distant Prospect of 
Eton College as could our Maidie ? 

Here is some more of her prattle : " I went into Isa- 
bella's bed to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus " 
(the Venus de Medicis) " or the statute in an ancient 
Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at which my 
anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfort- 
able nap. All was now hushed up again, but again my 
anger burst forth at her biding me get up." 

She begins thus loftily, — 

" Death the righteous love to see, 
But from it doth the wicked flee." 

Then suddenly breaks off (as if with laughter), — 

" I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them !" 

" There is a thing I love to see, 
That is our monkey catch a flee." 

" I love in Isa's bed to lie, 
Oh, such a joy and luxury! 
The bottom of the bed I sleep. 
And with great care within I creep ; 
Oft I embrace her feet of hllys, 
But she has gotoD all the pillys. 
Her neck I never can embrace, 
But I do hug her feet in place." 



70 MARJOKIE FLEMING. 

How childish and yet how strong and free is her use 
of words ! — "I lay at the foot of the bed because Isa- 
bella said I disturbed her by continial fighting and kick- 
ing, but I was very dull, and continially at work reading 
the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I 
had slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of 
Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate of poor, poor 
Emily." 

Here is onie of her swains : — 

'* Very soft and white his cheeks, 
His hair is red, and grey his breeks ; 
His tooth is like the daisy fair, 
His only fault is in his hair.'* 

This is a higher flight : — 

" Dedicated to Mrs. H. Crawford by the Author, M. F. 

" Three turkeys fair their last have breathed. 
And now this world forever leaved ; 
Their father, and their mother too, 
They sigh and weep as well as you ; 
Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched. 
Into eternity theire laanched. 
A direful death indeed they had. 
As wad put any parent mad ; 
But she was more than usual calm. 
She did not give a single dam." 

This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, 
not to speak of the want of the n. We fear " she " is the 
abandoned mother, in spite of her previous sighs and 
tears. 

" Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, 
and not rattel over a prayer — for that we are kneeling 
at the footstool of our Lord and Creator, who saves us 
from eternal damnation, and from unquestionable fire and 
brimston." 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 71 

She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots ; — 

" Queen Mary was much loved by all, 
Both by the great and by the small, 
But hark ! her soul to heaven doth rise ! 
And I suppose she has gained a prize — 
For I do think she would not go 
Into the awful place below ; 
There is a thing that I must tell, 
Elizabeth went to fire and hell ; 
He who would teach her to be civil, 
It must be her great friend the divil ! " 

She hits off Darnley well : — 

" A noble's son, a handsome lad. 
By some queer way or other, had 
Got quite the better of her heart, 
With him she always talked apart; 
Silly he was, but very fair, 
A greater buck was not found there." 

'^ By some queer way or other " ; is not this the general 
case and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? 
Goethe's doctrine of "elective affinities" discovered by 
our Pet Maidie. 

Sonnet to a Monkey. 

*' lively, most charming pug 
Thy graceful air, and heavenly mug; 
The beauties of his mind do shine, 
And every bit is shaped and fine. 
Your teeth are whiter than the snow. 
Your a great buck, your a great beau; 
Your eyes are of so nice a shape. 
More like a Christian's than an ape; 
Your cheek is like the rose's blume. 
Your hair is like the raven's plume ; 
His nose's cast is of the Roman, 
He is a very pretty woman. 
I could not get a rhyme for Roman, 
So was obliged to call him woman." 



72 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of 
James the Second being killed at Roxburgh : — 

" He was killed by a cannon splinter, 
Quite in the middle of the winter ; 
Perhaps it was not at that time, 
But I can get no other rhyme ! " 

Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th 
October, 1811. You can see how her nature is deepening 
and enriching: — "My Dear Mother, — You will think 
that I entirely forget you but I assure you that you are 
greatly mistaken. I think of you always and often sigh 
to think of the distance between us two loving creatures 
of nature. We have regular hours for all our occupations 
first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come home at 
8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating and then 
play till ten then we get our music till 11 when we get 
our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till 1 after 
which I get my gramer ^nd then work till five. At 7 we 
come and knit till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. 
This is an exact description. I must take a hasty fare- 
well to her whom I love, reverence and doat on and who 
I hope thinks the same of 

"Marjory Fleming. 

"P. /SI — An old pack of cards (!) would be very exep- 
tible." 

This other is a month earlier : — " My dear little 
Mama, — I was truly happy to hear that you were all 
well. We are surrounded with measles at present on 
every side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was 
near Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her out 
of bed, and she fell down as they thought lifeless. Mr. 
Heron said, 'That lassie's deed noo' — 'I'm no deed yet.' 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 73 

She then threw up a big worm nine inches and a half 
long. I have begun dancing, but am not very fond of it, 
for the boys strikes and mocks me. — I have been an- 
other night at the dancing ; I like it better. I will write 
to you as often as T can ; but I am afraid not every week. 
I long for you with the longings of a child to embrace you 
— to fold you in my arms, I respect you with all the re- 
spect due to a mother. You dont know how I love you. So 
I shall remain^ your loving child — M. Fleming." 

What rich involution of love in the words marked ! 

Here are some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July, 

1811: — 

" There is a thing that I do want, 
With you these beauteous walks to haunt, 
We would be happy if you would 
Try to come over if you could. 
Then I would all quite happy be 
Now and for all eternity. 
My mother is so very sweet, 
And checks my appetite to eat ; 
My father shows us what to do ; 
But I 'm sure that I want you. 
I have no more of poetry ; 
Isa do remember me, 
And try to love your Marjory.** 

In a letter from " Isa " to 

" Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming, 
favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming," 

she says: "I long much to see you, and talk over all our 
old stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. 1 
am pining for my old friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and 
wicked Richard. How is the dear Multiplication table 
going on ? are you still as much attached to 9 times 9 as 
you used to be ? " 
4 



74 MAEJORIE FLEMING. 

But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee, — to come 
" quick to confusion." The measles she writes of seized 
her, and she died on the 19th of December, 1811. The 
day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn 
and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming 
world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the fol- 
lowing lines by Burns, — heavy with the shadow of death, 
and lit with the fantasy of the judgment-seat, — the 
publican's prayer in paraphrase: — 

" Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene ? 
Have I so found it full of pleasing charms ? 
Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between, 
Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms. 
Is it departing pangs my soul alarms? 
Or death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode? 

For guilt, for guilt my terrors are in arms ; 
I tremble to approach an angry God, 
And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod. 

" Fain would I say, forgive my foul offence, 
Fain promise never more to disobey ; 
But should my Author health again dispense, 
Again I might forsake fair virtue's way, 
Again in folly's path might go astray. 
Again exalt the brute and sink the man. 

Then how should I for heavenl}^ mercy pray, 
Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan, 
Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran? 

" thou great Governor of all below, 
If I might dare a lifted eye to thee. 
Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, 
And still the tumult of the raging sea ; 
With that controlling power assist even me 
Those headstrong furious passions to confine, 

For all unfit I feel my powers to be 
To rule their torrent in the allowed line ; 
aid me with thy help, Omnipotence Divine." 

It is more affecting than we care to sav to read her 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 75 

mother's and Isabella Keith's letters written immediately 
after her death. Old and withered, tattered and pale, 
they are now : but when you read them, how quick, how 
throbbing with life and love ! how rich in that language 
of affection which only women, and Shakespeare, and 
Luther can use, — that power of detaining the soul over 
the beloved object and its loss. 

"^. Philip to Constance. 

You are as fond of grief as of your child. 
Const. Grief fills the room up of ray absent child, 

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me ; 
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
Then I have reason to be fond of grief." 

What variations cannot love play on this one string ! 

In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says 
of her dead Maidie : — " Never did I behold so beautiful 
an object. It resembled the finest wax- work. There 
was in the countenance an expression of sweetness and 
serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit had 
anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal 
frame. To tell you what your Maidie said of you would 
fill volumes ; for you was the constant theme of her dis- 
course, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler of her ac- 
tions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours 
before all sense save that of suffering was suspended, 
when she said to Dr. Johnstone, ' If you will let me out 
at the New Year, I will be quite contented.' I asked 
what made her so anxious to get out then. ^ I want to 
purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with the six- 
pence you gave me for being patient in the measles ; and 
I would like to choose it myself.' I do not remember her 
speaking afterwards, except to complain of her head, till 



76 MAKJORIE FLEMING. 

just before she expired, when she articulated, ' mother ! 
mother ! ' " 

Do we make too much of this little child, who has been 
in her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more 
years ? We may of her cleverness, — not of her affection- 
ateness, her nature. What a picture the animosa infans 
gives us of herself, her vivacity, her passionateness, her 
precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for swine, 
for all living things, her reading, her turn for expression, 
her satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, her 
great repentances ! We don't wonder Walter Scott car- 
ried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself 
with her for hours. 

The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was 
at a Twelfth Night supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. 
The company had all come, — all but Marjorie. Scott's 
familiars, whom we all know, were there, — all were come 
but Marjorie ; and all were dull because Scott was dull, 
"Where's that bairn? what can have come over her? 
I '11 go myself and see." And he was getting up, and 
would have gone ; when the bell rang, and in came Dun- 
can Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, 
which was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. 
And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie 
in white, her eyes gleaming, and Scott bending over her 
in ecstasy, — "hung over her enamored." " Sit ye there, 
my dautie, till they all see you"; and forthwith he 
brought them all. You can fancy the scene. And he 
lifted her up and marched to his seat with her on his 
stout shoulder, and set her down beside him ; and then 
began the night, and such a night ! Those who knew 
Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 77 

and he were the stars ; and she gave them Constance's 
speeches and Helvellyrij the ballad then much in vogue, 
and all her repertoire^ — Scott showing her off, and being 
ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders. 

We are indebted for the following — and our readers 
will be not unwilling to share our obligations — to her 
sister : — " Her birth was 15th January, 1803 ; her death 
19th December, 1811. I take this from her Bibles.* I 
believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor 
of body, and beautifully formed arms, and until her last 
illness, never was an hour in bed. She was niece to Mrs. 
Keith, residing in No. 1 North Charlotte Street, who was 
not Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately acquaint- 
ed with that old lady. My aunt was a daughter of Mr. 
James Rae, surgeon, and married the younger son of old 
Keith of Ravelstone. Corstorphine Hill belonged to my 
aunt's husband ; and his eldest son. Sir Alexander Keith, 
succeeded his uncle to both Ravelstone and Dunnottar. 
The Keiths were not connected by relationship with the 
Howisons of Braehead ; but my grandfather and grand- 
mother (who was), a daughter of Cant of Thurston and 
Giles- Grange, were on the most intimate footing with our 
Mrs. Keith's grandfather and grandmother ; and so it has 
been for three generations, and the friendship consum- 
mated by my cousin William Keith marrying Isabella 
Craufurd. 

" As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very inti- 
mate footing. He asked my aunt to be godmother to his 
eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss 

* " Her Bible is before me; apair^ as then called; the faded marks 
are just as she placed them. There is one at David's lament over 
Jonathan." 



78 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

Edge worth's ' Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy ' for long, 
which was ' a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,' prob- 
ably the first edition of that attractive series, for it wanted 
' Frank,' which is always now published as part of the 
series, under the title of Early Lessons, I regret to say 
these little volumes have disappeared." 

" Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the 
Keiths, through the Swintons ; and, like Marjorie, he 
stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, with his 
grand-aunt Mrs. Keith ; and it was while seeing him there 
as a boy, that another aunt of mine composed, when he 
was about fourteen, the lines prognosticating his future 
fame that Lockhart ascribes in his Life to Mrs. Cock- 
burn, authoress of ^The Flowers of the Forest': — 

" Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue 
Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you ; 
Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise, 
By tiniely culture, to their native skies ; 
Go, and employ the poet' s heavenly art, 
Not merely to delight, but mend the heart." 

Mrs. Keir was my aunt's name, another of Dr. Rae's 
daughters." We cannot better end than in words from 
this same pen : — "I have to ask you to forgive my 
anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie's last 
days, but I have an almost sacred feehng to all that per- 
tains to her. You are quite correct in s.tating that measles 
were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by 
the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this 
illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature ; but love and 
poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone 
rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request 
speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year's 
day came. When asked why she was so desirous of get- 
ting out, she immediately rejoined, ' Oh, I am so anxious 



MARJORIE FLEMING. 79 

to buy something with my sixpence for my dear Isa 
Keith.' Again, when lying very still, her mother asked 
her if there was anything she wished : ' Oh yes ! if you 
would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play 
'* The Land o' the Leal," and I will lie and thinks and 
enjoy myself (this is just as stated to me by her mother 
and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and 
child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the 
nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after 
tea. My father, who idolized this child, and never after- 
wards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in his 
arms ; and while walking her up and down the room, she 
said, ' Father, I will repeat something to you ; what 
would you like ? ' He said, ^ Just choose yourself, 
Maidie.' Sh^ hesitated for a moment between the para- 
phrase, ' Few are thy days, and full of woe,' and the lines 
of Burns already quoted, but decided on the latter, a re- 
markable choice for a child. The repeating these lines 
seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She 
asked to be allowed to write a poem ; there was a doubt 
whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting 
her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, ' Just this once ' ; the 
point was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great 
rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines, ' to her 
loved cousin on the author's recovery,' her last work on 
earth : — 

*:0h ! Isa, pain did visit me, 
I was at the last extremity ; 
How often did I think of you, 
I wished your graceful form to view, 
To clasp you in my weak embrace, 
Indeed I thought I 'd run my race : 
Good care, I 'm sure, was of me taken, 
But still indeed I was much shaken, 



80 MARJORIE FLEMING. 

At last I daily strength did gain, 
And oh ! at last, away went pain ; 
At length the doctor thought I might 
Stay in the parlor all the night; 
I now continue so to do, 
Farewell to Nancy and to you.* 

She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle 
of the night with the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 
' My head, my head ! ' Three days of the dire malady, 
' water in the head,' followed, and the end came." 

" Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly.** 

It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to this : 
the fervor, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the 
lovely and glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright 
and warm intelligence, that darling child, — Lady Nairne's 
words, and the old tune, stealing up from the depths of 
the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong 
like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to 
sleep in the dark ; — the words of Burns touching the 
kindred chord, her last numbers " wildly sweet " traced, 
with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last 
enemy and friend, — moriens canity — and that love which 
is so soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's burden 
to the end, 

" She set as sets the morning star, which goes 
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides 
Obscured among the tempests of the sky. 
But melts away into the hght of heaven." 




JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 



. A LAY SERMON. 



<©o«> 



JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 




HEN my father was in Broughton Place 
Church, we had a door-keeper called Jeems^ 
and a formidable little man and door-keeper 
he was; of unknown age and name, for he 
existed to us, and indeed still exists to me — though he 
has been in his grave these sixteen years — as Jeems^ 
absolute and jt?er se^ no more needing a surname than did 
or do Abraham or Isaac, Samson or Nebuchadnezzar. 
We young people of the congregation believed that he 
was out in the '45, and had his drum shot through and 
quenched at CuUoden ; and as for any indication on his 
huge and gray visage of his ever having been young, he 
might safely have been Bottom the Weaver in " A Mid- 
summer Night's Dream," or that excellent, ingenious, and 
"wise-hearted" Bezaleel, the son of Uri, whom Jeems 
regarded as one of the greatest of men and of weavers, 
and whose " ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, 
and purple, and scai'let, each of them with .fifty loops on 
the edge of the selvedge in the coupling, with their fifty 
taches of gold," he, in confidential moments, gave it to be 
understood were the sacred triumphs of his craft; for, 
as you may infer, my friend was a man of the treadles 
and the shuttle, as well as the more renowned grandson 
of Hur. 



84 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 

Jeems's face was so extensive, and met you so formi- 
dably and at once, that it mainly composed his whole ; 
and such a face ! Sydney Smith used to say of a certain 
quarrelsome man, "His very face is a breach of the 
peace." Had he seen our friend's he would have said he 
was the imperative mood on two (very small) legs, out on 
business in a blue great-coat. It was in the nose and the 
keen small eye that his strength lay. Such a nose of 
power, so undeniable, I never saw, except in what was 
said to be a bust from the antique, of Rhadamanthus, the 
well-known Justice Clerk of the Pagan Court of Session ! 
Indeed, when I was in the Rector's class, and watched 
Jeems turning interlopers out of the church seats, by 
merely presenting before them this tremendous organ, it 
struck me that if Rhadamanthus had still been here, and 
out of employment, he would have taken kindly to Jeems^s 
work, — and that possibly he was that potentate in a 
U. P. disguise. 

Nature having fashioned the huge face, and laid out 
much material and idea upon it, had finished off the rest of 
Jeems somewhat scrimply, as if she had run out of means ; 
his legs especially were of the shortest, and as his usual 
dress was a very long blue great-coat, made for a much 
taller man, its tails resting upon the ground, and its large 
hind buttons in a totally preposterous position, gave him 
the look of being planted, or rather after the manner of 
Milton's beasts at the creation, in the act of emerging 
painfully from his mother earth. 

Now, you may think this was a very ludicrous old 
object. If you had seen him, you would not have said so ; 
and not only was he a man of weight and authority, — he 
was likewise a genuine, indeed a deeply spiritual Chris- 
tian, well read in his Bible, in his own heart, and in 



JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 85 

human nature and life, knowing both its warp and woof ; 
more peremptory in making himself obey his Master, 
than in getting himself obeyed, and this is saying a good 
deal ; and, like all complete men, he had a genuine love 
and gift of humor,* kindly and uncouth, lurking in those 
small, deep-set gray eyes, shrewd and keen, which, like 
two sharpest of shooters, enfiladed that massive and re- 
doubtable bulwark, the nose. 

One day two strangers made themselves over to Jeems 
to be furnished with seats. Motioning them to follow, he 
walked majestically to the farthest in corner, where he 
had decreed they should sit. The couple found seats 
near the door, and stepped into them, leaving Jeems to 
march through the passages alone, the whole congregation 
watching him with some relish and alarm. He gets to 
his destination, opens the door, and stands aside ; nobody 
appears. He looks sharply round, and then gives a look 
of general wrath "at lairge." No one doubted his victory. 
His nose and eye fell, or seemed to fall, on the two cul- 
prits, and pulled them out instantly, hurrying them to 
their appointed place ; Jeems snibbed them slowly in, and 
gave them a parting look they were not likely to misun- 
derstand or forget. 

At that time the crowds and the imperfect ventilation 
made fainting a common occurrence in Broughton Place, 
especially among " thae young hizzies,^' as Jeems called the 
servant girls. He generally came to me, " the young 
Doctor," on these occasions with a look of great relish. I 
had indoctrinated him in the philosophy of syncopes, 

* On one occasion a descendant of Nabal having put a crown-piece 
into "the plate" instead of a penny, and starting at its white and 
precious face, asked to have it back, and was refused, — " In once, in 
forever." " A weel, a weel," grunted he, " I '11 get credit for it in 
heaven." " Na, na," said Jeems, " ye 'U get credit only for the penny J" 



86 JEEMS THE DOOK-KEEPER. 

especially as to the propriety of laying the "hizzies^^ 
quite flat on the floor of the lobby, with the head as low 
as the rest of the body ; and as many of these cases were 
owing to what Jeems called " that bitter yerkin " of their 
boddices, he and I had much satisfaction in relieving them, 
and giving them a moral lesson, by cutting their stay-laces, 
which ran before the knife, and cracked " like a bowstring," 
as my coadjutor said. One day a young lady was our care. 
She was lying out, and slowly coming to. Jeems, with 
that huge terrific visage, came round to me with his open 
gully in his hand, whispering, " Wull oo ripp 'er up noo?" 
It happened not to be a case for ripping up. The gully 
was a great sanitary institution, and made a decided in- 
road upon the yerhing system, — Jeems having, thanks to 
this and Dr. Combe, every year fewer opportunities of 
displaying and enjoying its powers. 

He was sober in other things besides drink, could be 
generous on occasion, but was careful of his siller ; sen- 
sitive to fierceness (" we 're uncommon zeelyous the day," 
was a favorite phrase when any church matter was stir- 
ring) for the honor of his church and minister, and to his 
too often worthless neighbors a perpetual moral protest and 
lesson, — a living epistle. He dwelt at the head of Big 
Lochend's Close in the Canongate, at the top of a long 
stair, — ninety-six steps, as I well know, — where he had 
dwelt, all by himself, for five-and-thirty years, and where, 
in the midst of all sorts of flittings and changes, not a day 
opened or closed without the well-known sound of Jeems 
at his prayers, — his " exercise," — at " the Books." 
His clear, fearless, honest voice in psalm and chapter, and 
strong prayer come sounding through that wide " landy^ 
like that of one crying in the wilderness. 

Jeems and I got great friends ; he called me John, as if 



JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 87 

he was my grandfather ; and though as plain in speech as 
in feature, he was never rude. I owe him much in many 
ways. His absolute downrightness and yaefauldness ; his 
energetic, unflinching fulfilment of his work ; his rugged, 
sudden tenderness ; his look of sturdy age, as the thick 
silver- white hair lay on his serious and weatherworn face, 
like moonlight on a stout old tower ; his quaint Old 
Testament exegetics ; his lonely and contented life ; his 
simple godliness, — it was no small privilege to see much 
of all this. 

But I must stop. I forget that you did n't know him ; 
that he is not your Jeems, If it had been so, you would 
not soon have wearied of telling or of being told of the 
life and conversation of this " fell body." He was not 
communicative about his early life. He would sometimes 
speak to me about " ^er," as if I knew who and where she 
was, and always with a gentleness and solemnity unlike 
his usual gruff ways. I found out that he had been mar- 
ried when young, and that " she " (he never named her) 
and their child died on the same day, — the day of its 
birth. The only indication of married life in his room 
was an old and strong cradle, which he had cut down so 
as to rock no more, and which he made the depository of 
his books, — a queer collection. 

I have said that he had what he called, with a grave 
smile, /am?7y worship, morning and evening, never fail- 
ing. He not only sang his psalm, but gave out or chanted 
the line in great style ; and on seeing me one morning 
surprised at this, he said, "Ye see John, oo'' meaning 
himself and his wife, " began that way.'' He had a firm, 
true voice, and a genuine though roughish gift of singing, 
and being methodical in all things, he did what I never 
heard of in any one else, — he had seven fixed tunes, one 



88 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 

of which he sang on its own set day. Sabbath morning 
it was French^ which he went through with great hirr, 
Monday, Scarborough, which, he said, was like my father 
cantering. Tuesday, Coleshill, that soft, exquisite air, — 
monotonous and melancholy, soothing and vague, like the 
sea. This day, Tuesday, was the day of the week on 
which his wife and child died, and he always sang more 
verses then than on any other. Wednesday was Irish ; 
Thursday, Old Hundred; Friday, Bangor; and Satur- 
day, Blackburn, that humdrummest of tunes, " as long, and 
lank, and lean, as is the ribbed sea-sand." He could not 
defend it, but had some secret reason for sticking to it. 
As to the evenings, they were just the same tunes in re- 
versed order, only that on Tuesday night he sang Coles- 
hill again, thus dropping Blackburn for evening work. 
The children could tell the day of the week by Jeems's 
tune, and would have been as much astonished at hearing 
Bangor on Monday, as at finding St. Giles's half-way 
down the Canongate. 

I frequently breakfasted with him. He made capital 
porridge, and I wish I could get such buttermilk, or at 
least have such a relish for it, as in those days. Jeems is 
away, — gone over to the majority ; and I hope I may 
never forget to be grateful to the dear and queer old man. 
I think I see and hear him saying his grace over our 
bickers with their brats on, then taking his two books out 
of the cradle and reading, not without a certain homely 
majesty, the first verse of the 99th Psalm, ' 

" Th' eternal Lord doth reign as king, 
Let all the people quake ; 
He sits between the cherubims, 

Let th' earth be moved and shake " ; 

then launching out into the noble depths of Irish. His 



JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 89 

chapters were long, and his prayers short, very scriptural, 
but by no means stereotyped, and wonderfully real, im- 
mediate^ as if he was near Him whom he addressed. 
Any one hearing the sound and not the words, would say, 
" That man is speaking to some one who is with him, — 
who is present,'' — as he often said to me, " There 's nae 
gude dune, John, till ye get to close grujtsr 

Now, I dare say you are marvelling, — firsts Why I 
brought this grim, old Khadamanthus, Bezaleel, U. P. 
Naso of a door-keeper up before you ; and secondly^ How 
I am to get him down decorously in that ancient blue 
great-coat, and get at my own proper text. 

And first of the first, I thought it would do you 
young men — the hope of the world — no harm to let 
your affections go out toward this dear, old-world speci- 
men of homespun worth. And as to the second^ I am 
going to make it my excuse for what is to come. One 
day soon after I knew him, when I thought he was in a 
soft, confidential mood, I said, '' Jeems, what kind of 
weaver are you ? " " / ^m in the fancical line, maister 
John," said he, somewhat stifily ; " I like its leecenceJ' So 
exit Jeems — impiger, iracundus, acer — torvus visu — 
placide quiescat 1 

Now, my dear friends, I am in \k\^ fancical line as well 
as Jeems, and in virtue of my leecence, I begin my exeget- 
ical remarks on the pursuit of truth. By the by, I should 
have told Sir Henry that it is truth, not knowledge, I 
was to be after. Now all knowledge should be true, but 
it is n't ; much of what is called knowledge is very little 
worth even when true, and much of the best truth is not 
in a strict sense knowable, — rather it is felt and believed. 

Exegetical, you know, is the grand and fashionable 
word now-a-days for explanatory ; it means bringing out 



90 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 

of a passage all that is in it, and nothing more. For my 
part, being in Jeems's line, I am not so particular as to 
the nothing more. We fancical men are much given to 
make somethings of nothings ; indeed, the noble Italians 
call imagination and poetic fancy the little more; its 
very function is to embellish and intensify the actual and 
the common. Now you must not laugh at me, or it, 
when I announce the passage from which I mean to 
preach upon the pursuit of truth, and the possession of 
wisdom : — 

"On Tintock tap there is a Mist, 
And in the Mist there is a Kist, 
And in the Kist there is a Cap ; 
Tak' up the Cap and sup the drap, 
And set the Cap on Tintock tap." 

As to what Sir Henry* would call the context, we are 
saved all trouble, there being none, the passage being 
self-contained, and as destitute of relations as Melchisedec. 

Tintock^ you all know, or should know, is a big porphy- 
ritic hill in Lanarkshire, standing alone, and dominating 
like a king over the Upper Ward. Then we all under- 
stand what a mist is ; and it is worth remembering that as 
it is more difficult to penetrate, to illuminate, and to see 
through mist than darkness, so it is easier to enlighten 
and overcome ignorance, than error, confusion, and mental 
mist. Then a hist is Scotch for chest, and a cap the same 
for cup, and drap for drop. Well, then, I draw out of 
these queer old lines, — 

Firsts That to gain real knowledge, to get it at first- 
hand, you must go up the Hill Difficulty, — some Tintock, 
something you see from afar, - — and you must climh ; you 

* This was read to Sir Henry W. Moncreiff 's Young Men's Associa- 
tion, November, 1862. 



JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 91 

must energize, as Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Chal- 
mers said and did; you must turn your back upon the 
plain, and you must mainly go alone, and on your own 
legs. Two boys may start together on going up Tinto, 
and meet at the top ; but the journeys are separate, each 
takes his own line. 

Secondly^ You start for your Tintock top with a given 
object, to get into the mist and get the drop, and you do 
this chiefly because you have the truth-hunting instinct ; 
you long to know what is hidden there, for there is a wild 
and urgent charm in the unknown ; and you want to 
realize for yourself what others, it may have been ages 
ago, tell they have found there. 

Thirdly^ There is no road up ; no omnibus to the top 
of Tinto ; you must zigzag it in your own way, and as I 
have already said, most part of it alone. 

Fourthly^ This climbing, this exaltation, and buckling 
to of the mind, of itself does you good;* it is capital 
exercise, and you find out many a thing by the way. 
Your lungs play freely ; your mouth fills with the sweet 
waters of keen action ; the hill tries your wind and met- 
tle, supples and hardens your joints and limbs ; quickens 
and rejoices, while it tests your heart. 

Fifthly^ You have many a fall, many a false step ; you 
slip back, you tumble into a mosshagg ; you stumble over 
the baffling stones ; you break your shins and lose your 
temper, and the finding of it makes you keep it better 
the next time ; you get more patient, and yet more eager, 
and not un often you come to a stand-still ; run yourself 
up against, or to the edge of some impossible precipice, 
some insoluble problem, and have to turn for your life ; 

* ** In this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our game, 
the chase is certainly of service." — Burke. 



92 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 

and you may find yourself over bead in a treacherous 
wellee, whose soft inviting cushion of green has decoyed 
many a one before you. 

Sixthly, You are forever mistaking the top ; thinking 
you are at it, when, behold ! there it is, as if farther off 
than ever, and you may have to humble yourself in a hid- 
den valley before reascending ; and so on you go, at times 
flinging yourself down on the elastic heather, stretched 
panting with your face to the sky, or gazing far away 
athwart the widening horizon. 

Seventhly, As you get up, you may see how the world be- 
low lessens and reveals itself, comes up to you as a whole, 
with its just proportions and relations ; how small the vil- 
lage you live in looks, and the house in which you were 
born ; how the plan of the place comes out : there is the 
quiet churchyard, and a lamb is nibbling at that infant's 
grave ; there, close to the little church, your mother rests 
till the great day ; and there far off you may trace the 
river winding through the plain, coming like human life, 
from darkness to darkness, — from its source in some wild, 
upland solitude to its eternity, the sea. But you have 
rested long enough, so, up and away ! take the hill once 
again ! Every effort is a victory and joy, — new skill 
and power and relish, — takes you farther from the world 
below, nearer the clouds and heavens ; and you may note 
that the more you move up towards the pure blue depths 
of the sky, — the more lucid and the more unsearchable, 
— the farther off, the more withdrawn into their own clear 
infinity do they seem. Well, then, you get to the upper 
story, and you find it less difficult, less steep than lower 
down ; often so plain and level, that you can run off in an 
ecstasy to the crowning cairn, to the sacred mist, — within 
w^hose cloudy shrine rests the unknown secret; some 



JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 93 

great truth of God and of your own soul ; something that 
is not to be gotten for gold down on the plain, but may be 
taken here ; something that no man can give or take away ; 
something that you must work for and learn yourself, and 
which, once yours, is safe beyond the chances of time. 

Eighthly, You enter that luminous cloud, stooping and 
as a little child, — as, indeed, all the best kingdoms are 
entered, — and pressing on, you come in the shadowy 
light to the long-dreamt-of ark, — the chest. It is shut, 
it is locked ; but if you are the man I take you to be, you 
have the key, put it gently in, steadily, and home. But 
what is the key ? It is the love of truth ; neither more 
nor less ; no other key opens it ; no false one, however 
cunning, can pick that lock ; no assault of hammer, how- 
ever stout, can force it open. But with its own key, a lit- 
tle child may open it, often does open it, it goes so sweetly, 
so with a will. You lift the lid ; you are all alone ; the 
cloud is round you with a sort of tender light of its own, 
shutting out the outer world, filling you with an eerie joy, 
as if alone and yet not alone. You see the cup within, 
and in it the one crystalline, unimaginable, inestimable 
drop ; glowing and tremulous, as if alive. You take up 
the cup, you sup the drop ; it enters into, and becomes of 
the essence of yourself; and so in humble gratitude and 
love, " in sober certainty of waking bliss," you gently re- 
place the cup. It will gather again, — it is for ever ever 
gathering; no man, woman, or child ever opened that 
chest, and found no drop in the cup. It might not be the 
very drop expected ; it will serve their purpose none the 
worse, often much the better. 

And now, bending down, you shut the lid, which you 
hear locking itself afresh against all but the sacred key. 
You leave the now hallowed mist. You look out on the 



94 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 

old familiar world again, which somehow looks both new 
and old. You descend, making your observations over 
again, throwing the light of the present on the past ; and 
past and present set against the boundless future. You 
hear coming up to you the homely sounds — the sheep- 
dog's bark, " the cock's shrill clarion " — from the farm at 
the hill-foot ; you hear the ring of the blacksmith's stud^, 
you see the smoke of his forge ; your mother's grave has 
the long shadows of evening lying across it, the sunlight 
falling on the letters of her name, and on the number of 
her years ; the lamb is asleep in the bield of the infant's 
grave. Speedily you are at your own door. You enter 
with wearied feet, and thankful heart ; you shut the door, 
and you kneel down and pray to your Father in heaven, 
the Father of lights, your reconciled Father, the God and 
Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and our 
God and Father in and through him. And as you lie 
down on your own delightful bed before you fall asleep, 
you think over again your ascent of the Hill Difficulty, 
— its baffling heights, its reaches of dreary moorland, its 
shifting gravel, its precipices, its quagmires, its little wells 
of living waters near the top, and all its " dread magnifi- 
cence " ; its calm, restful summit, the hush of silence 
there, the all-al oneness of the place and hour ; its peace, 
its sacredness, its divineness. You see again the mist, 
the ark, the cup, the gleaming drop, and recalling the 
sight of the world below, the earth and all its fulness, you 
say to yourself, — 

" These are thy glorions works, Parent of good, 
Almighty, thine this universal frame, 
Thus wondrous fair ; Thyself how wondrous then ! 
Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens." 

And finding the burden ^oo heavy even for these glorious 

lines, you take refuge in the Psalms, — 



JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 95 

" Praise ye the Lord. 
Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights. 
Praise him in the firmament of his power. 
Praise ye him, all his angels : praise ye him, all his hosts. 
Praise ye him, sun and moon : praise him, all ye stars of light. 
Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps; 
Fire and hail ; snow and vapor ; stormy wind fulfilling his word : 
Mountains, and all hills ; fruitful trees, and all cedars ; 
Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl: 
Kings of the earth, and all people; princes and all judges of the earth 
Both young men and maidens; old men and children: 
Let them praise the name of the Lord : 
For his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and 

heaven. 
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. 
Bless the Lord, my soul ! *' 

I need hardly draw the moral of this our somewhat 
fancical exercitation and exegesis. You can all make it 
out, such as it is. It is the toil, and the joy, and the 
victory in the search of truth ; not the taking on trust, or 
learning by rote, not by heart, what other men count or 
call true ; but the vital appropriation, the assimilation of 
truth to ourselves, and of ourselves to truth. All truth 
is of value, but one truth differs from another in weight 
and in brightness, in worth ; and you need not me to tell 
you that spiritual and eternal truth, the truth as it is in 
Jesus, is the best. And don't think that your own hand 
has gotten you the victory, and that you had no unseen, 
and it may be unfelt and unacknowledged, hand guiding 
you up the hill. Unless the Lord had been at and on your 
side, all your labor would have been in vain, and worse. 
No two things are more inscrutable or less uncertain than 
man's spontaneity and man's helplessness, — Freedom and 
Grace as the two poles. It is His doing that you are led 
to the right hill and the right road, for there are other 
Tintocks, with other kists, and other drops. Work out, 



96 JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 

therefore, your own knowledge with fear and trembling, 
for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, 
and to know of his good pleasure. There is no explain- 
ing and there is no disbelieving this. 

And now, before bidding you good by, did you ever 
think of the spiritual meaning of the pillar of cloud by 
day, and the pillar of fire by night, as connected with our 
knowledge and our ignorance, our light and darkness, our 
gladness and our sorrow? The every-day use of this 
divine alternation to the wandering children of Israel is 
plain enough. Darkness is best seen against light, and 
light against darkness ; and its use, in a deeper sense of 
keeping forever before them the immediate presence of 
Grod in the midst of them, is not less plain ; but I some- 
times think, that we who also are still in the wilderness, 
and coming up from our Egypt and its flesh-pots, and on 
our way let us hope, through God's grace, to the celestial 
Canaan, may draw from these old-world signs and wonders 
that, in the midday of knowledge, with daylight all about 
us, there is, if one could but look for it, that perpetual 
pillar of cloud, — that sacred darkness which haunts all 
human knowledge, often the most at its highest noon ; 
that " look that threatens the profane " ; that something, 
and above all, that sense of Some One, that Holy One, 
who inhabits eternity and its praises, who makes darkness 
His secret place. His pavilion round about, darkness and 
thick clouds of the sky. 

And again, that in the deepest, thickest night of doubt, 
of fear, of sorrow, of despair ; that then, and all the most 
then, — if we will but look in the right airt, and with the 
seeing eye and the understanding heart, — there may be 
seen that Pillar of fire, of light and of heat, to guide and 
quicken and cheer ; knowledge and love, that everlasting 



JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER. 97 

love which we know to be the Lord's. And how much 
better oflP are we than the chosen people ; their pillars 
were on earth, divine in their essence, but subject doubt- 
less to earthly perturbations and interferences ; but our 
guiding light is in the heavens, towards which may we 
take earnest heed that we are journeying. 

" Once on the raging seas I rode, 

The storm was loud, the night was dark ; 
The ocean yawned, and rudely blowed 
The wind that tossed my foundering bark. 

" Deep horror then my vitals froze, 

Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem, 
When suddenly a star arose, — 
It was the Star of Bethlehem ! 

** It was my guide, my light, my all. 
It bade my dark foreboding cease ; 
And through the storm and danger's thrall 
It led me to the port in peace. 

** Now safely moored, my perils o'er, 
I '11 sing first in night's diadem, 
Forever and forevermore 
The Star, the Star of Bethlehem ! " 




MINCHMOOR. 



" Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass, 
Yellow on Yarrow's banks the gowan, 
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, 
Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan. 

" Flows Yarrow sweet ? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed, 
As green its grass, its gowan yellow, 
As sweet smells on its braes the birk, 
The apple frae the rock as mellow." 

Hamilton of Banoour. 




" There is moral as well as bodily wholesomeness in a mountain 
walk, if the walker has the understanding heart, and eschews picnics. 
It is good for any man to be alone with nature and himself, or with a 
friend who knows when silence is more sociable than talk, — 

' In the wilderness alone, 
There where nature worships God.' 

It is well to be in places where man is little and God is great, — where 
what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand 
years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been 
a thousand years in his grave. It abates and rectifies a man, if he is 
worth the process. 

" It is not favorable to religious feeling to hear only of the actions 
and interference of man, and to behold nothing but what human inge- 
nuity has completed. There is an image of God*s greatness impressed 
upon the outward face of nature fitted to make us all pious, and to 
breathe into our hearts a purifying and salutary fear. 

" In cities, everything is man, and man alone. He seems to move 
and govern all, and be the Providence of cities ; and there we do not 
render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the 
things which are God's ; but God is forgotten, and Caesar is supreme, — 
all is human policy, human foresight, human power; nothing reminds 
us of invisible dominion^ and concealed omnipotence, — it is all earth, 
and no heaven. One cure of this is prayer and the solitary place. As 
the body, harassed with the noxious air of cities, seeks relief in the 
freedom and purity of the fields and hills, so the mind, wearied by 
commerce with men, resumes its vigor in solitude, and repairs its dig- 
nity." — From Sydney Smith's Sermon, On the Effects which the 
tumultuous Life passed in great Cities produces upon the Moral and Relig- 
ious Character, 1809. 



MINCHMOOR. 






OW that everybody is out of town, and every 
place in the guide-books is as well known as 
Princes Street or Pali-Mall, it is something to 
discover a hill everybody has not been to the 
top of and which is not in Black. Such a hill is Minch- 
moor^ nearly three times as high as Arthur's Seat, and 
lying between Tweed and Yarrow. 

The best way to ascend it is from Traquair. You go 
up the wdld old Selkirk road, which passes almost right 
over the summit, and by which Montrose and his cavaliers 
fled from Philiphaugh, where Sir Walter's mother remem- 
bered crossing, when a girl, in a coach-and-six, on her 
way to a ball at Peebles, several footmen marching on 
either side of the carriage to prop it up or drag it out of 
the moss haggs ; and where, to our amazement, we learned 
that the Duchess of Buccleuch had lately driven her 
ponies. Before this we had passed the gray, old-world 
entrance to Traquair House, and looked down its grassv 
and untrod avenue to the pallid, forlorn mansion, stricken 
all o'er with eld, and noticed the wrought-iron gate embed- 
ded in a foot deep and more of soil, never having opened 
since the '45. There are the huge Bradwardine bear^; 
on each side, — most grotesque supporters, — with a super- 
fluity of ferocity and canine teeth. The whole place, like 



102 MINCHMOOR. 

the family whose it has been, seems dying out, — every- 
thing subdued to settled desolation. The old race, the old 
religion, the gaunt old house, with its small, deep, com- 
fortless windows, the decaying trees, the stillness about the 
doors, the grass overrunning everything, Nature reinstat- 
ing herself in her quiet way, — all this makes the place 
look as strange and pitiful among its fellows in the vale 
as would the earl who built it three hundred years ago, 
if we met him tottering along our way in the faded dress 
of his youth ; but it looks the earl's house still, and has a 
dignity of its own. 

We soon found the Minchmoor road, and took at once 
to the hill, the ascent being, as often is with other ascents 
in this world, steepest at first. Nothing could be more 
beautiful than the view as we ascended, and got a look of 
the " eye-sweet " Tweed hills, and their " silver stream." 
It was one of the five or six good days of this summer, — 
in early morning, " soft " and doubtful; but the mists 
drawing up, and now the noble, tawny hills were dappled 
with gleams and shadows, — 

" Sunbeams upon distant hills gliding apace," — 
the best sort of day for mountain scenery, — that ripple of 
light and shadow brings out the forms and the depths of 
the hills far better than a cloudless sky ; and the horizon 
is generally wider. 

Before us and far away was the round flat head of 
Minchmoor, with a dark, rich bloom on it from the thick, 
short heather, — the hills around being green. Near the 
top, on the Tweed side, its waters trotting away cheerily 
to the glen at Bold, is the famous Cheese Well, — always 
full, never overflowing. Here every traveller — Duchess, 
shepherd, or houseless mugger — stops, rests, and is 
thankful ; doubtless so did Montrose, poor fellow, and his 



MINCHMOOR. 103 

young nobles and their jaded steeds, on their scurry from 
Lesly and his Dragoons. It is called the Cheese Well, 
from those who rest there dropping in bits of their pro- 
visions, as votive offerings to the fairies whose especial 
haunt this mountain was. After our rest and drink, we 
left the road and made for the top. When there we 
were well rewarded. The great round-backed, kindly, 
solemn hills of Tweed, Yarrow, and Ettrick lay all about 
like sleeping mastiffs, — too plain to be grand, too ample 
and beautiful to be commonplace. 

There, to the northeast, is the place — Williamhope 
ridge — where Sir Walter Scott bade farewell to his 
heroic friend Mungo Park. They had come up from 
Ashestiel, where Scott then lived, and where " Marmion " 
was written and its delightful epistles inspired, — where 
he passed the happiest part of his life, — leaving it, as 
Hogg said, " for gude an' a' " ; for his fatal " dreams about 
his cottage " were now begun. He was to have " a hun- 
dred acres, two spare bedrooms, with dressing-rooms, 
each of which will on a pinch have a couch-bed." We 
all know what the dream, and the cottage, and the hun- 
dred acres came to, — the ugly Abbotsford ; the over- 
burdened, shattered brain driven wild, and the end, death, 
and madness. Well, it was on that ridge that the two 
friends — each romantic, but in such different wslys — 
parted never to meet again. There is the ditch Park's 
horse stumbled over and all but fell. " I am afraid, Mun- 
go, that's a bad omen," said the Sheriff; to which he an- 
swered, with a bright smile on his handsome, fearless 
face, " Freits (omens) follow those who look to them." 
With this expression, he struck the spurs into his horse, 
and Scott never saw him again. He had not long been 
married to a lovely and much-loved woman, and had been 



104 MINCHMOOR. 

speaking to Scott about his new African scheme, and how 
he meant to tell his family he had some business in Edin- 
burgh, — send them his blessing, and be off, — alas! never 
to return ! Scott used to say, when speaking of this part- 
ing, " I stood and looked back, but he did not." A more 
memorable place for two such men to part in would not 
easily be found. 

Where we are standing is the spot Scott speaks of 
when writing to Joanna Baillie about her new tragedies : 
" Were it possible for me to hasten the treat I expect 
in such a composition with you, I would promise to read 
the volume at the silence of noonday upon the top oj 
Minchmoor. The hour is allowed, by those skilful in 
demonology, to he as fall of witching as midnight itself; 
and I assure you I have felt really oppressed with a sort 
of fearful loneliness when looking around the naked tow- 
ering ridges of desolate barrenness, which is all the eye 
takes in from the top of such a mountain, the patches of 
cultivation being hidden in the little glens, or only appear- 
ing to make one feel how feeble and ineffectual man has 
been to contend with the genius of the soil. It is in such 
a scene that the unknown and gifted author of Albania 
places the superstition which consists in hearing the noise 
of a chase, the baying of the hounds, the throttling sobs of 
the deer, the wild halloos of the huntsmen, and the ' hoofs 
thick beating on the hollow hill.' I have often repeated 
his verses with some sensations of awe, in this place." 
The lines — and they are noble, and must have sounded 
wonderful with his voice and look — are as follows. Can 
no one tell us anything more of their author ? — 

*' There oft is heard, at midnight, or at noon, 
Beginning faint, but rising still more loud. 
And nearer, voice of hunters, and of hounds; 



MINCHMOOR. 105 

And horns, horse-winded, blowing tar and keen ! 

Forthwith the hubbub multiplies ; the gale 

Labors with wilder shrieks, and rifer din 

Of hot pursuit ; the broken cry of deer 

Mangled by throttling dogs ; the shouts of men, 

And hoofs thick beating on the hollow hill. 

Sudden the grazing heifer in the vale 

Starts at the noise, and both the herdman's ears 

Tingle with inward dread; — aghast he eyes 

The mountain's height, and all the ridges round, 

Yet not one trace of living wight discerns, 

Nor knows, o'erawed and trembling as he stands. 

To what or whom he owes his idle fear, — 

To ghost, to witch, to fairy, or to fiend ; 

But wonders, and no end of wondering finds.** 

We listened for the hunt, but could only hear the wind 

sobbing from the blind " HopesJ' * 

The view from the top reaches from the huge Harestane 

Broadlaw, — nearly as high as Ben Lomond, — whose 

top is as flat as a table, and would make a race-course of 

two miles, and where the clouds are still brooding, to the 

Cheviot ; and from the Maiden Pups in Liddesdale, and 

that wild huddle of hills at Moss Paid^ to Dunse Law^ 

and the weird Lammermoors, There is Ruberslaw^ 

always surly and dark. The Dunion^ beyond which lies 

Jedburgh. There are the Eildons, with their triple 

heights ; and you can get a glimpse of the upper woods 

of Abbotsford, and the top of the hill above Cauldshiels 

Loch, that very spot where the " wonderous potentate " 

— when suffering from languor and pain, and beginning 

to break down under his prodigious fertility — composed 

those touching lines : — 

" The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill 
In Ettrick's vale is sinking sweet; 

* The native word for hollows in the hills : thus, Dryhope, Games- 
hope, Chapelhope, etc. 
5* 



106 MINCHMOOR. 

The westland wind is hushed and still; 

The lake lies sleeping at my feet. 
Yet not the landscape to mine eye 

Bears those bright hues that once it bore, 
Though evening, with her richest dye, 

Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore. 

" With listless look along the plain 

I see Tweed's silver current glide, 
And coldly mark the holy fane 

Of Melrose rise in ruined pride. 
The quiet lake, the balmj^ air, 

The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree, 
Are they still such as once they were, 

Or is the dreary change in me ? 

" Alas ! the warped and broken board. 

How can it bear the painter's dye ! 
The harp of strained and tuneless chord, 

How to the minstrel's skill reply ! 
To aching eyes each landscape lowers. 

To feverish pulse each gale blows chill ; 
And Araby or Eden's bowers 

Were barren as this moorland hill." 

There, too, is Minto Hill, as modest and shapely and 
smooth as Clytie's shoulders, and Earlston Black Hill, 
with Cowdenknowes at its foot ; and there, standing stark 
and upright as a warder, is the stout old Smailholme 
Tower, seen and seeing all around. It is quite curious 
how unmistakable and important it looks at what must 
be twenty and more miles. It is now ninety years since 
that " lonely infant," who has sung its awful joys, was 
found in a thunder-storm, as we all know, lying on the 
soft grass at the foot of the gray old Strength, clapping 
his hands at each flash, and shouting, " Bonny ! bonny ! " 

We now descended into Yarrow, and forgathered with a 
shepherd who was taking his lambs over to the great 
Melrose fair. He was a fine specimen of a border herd, — 



MINCHMOOR. 107 

young, tall, sagacious, self-contained, and free in speech 
and air. We got his heart by praising his ^ogJed, a very 
fine collie, black and comely, gentle and keen. "Ay, 
she 's a fell yin ; she can do a' but speak." On asking 
him if the sheep-dogs needed much teaching, " Whyles 
ay and whyles no ; her kind (Jed's) needs nane. She 
sooks 't in wi' her mither's milk." On asking him if the 
dogs were ever sold, he said, "Never, but at an orra^ 
time. Naebody wad sell a gude dowg, and naebody wad 
buy an ill ane." He told us with great feeling, of the 
death of one of his best dogs by poison. It was plainly 
still a grief to him. " What was he poisoned with ? " 
" Strychnia," he said, as decidedly as might Dr. Christi- 
son. " How do you know ? " "I opened him, puir fal- 
low, and got him analeezed ! " 

Now we are on Birkindale Brae, and are looking down 
on the same scene as did 

" James Boyd (the Earle of Arran, his brother was he),'* 

when he crossed Minchmoor on his way to deliver James 
the Fifth's message to 

" Yon outlaw Murray, 
Surely whaur bauldly bideth he/* 

" Down Birkindale Brae when that he cam 
He saw the feir Foreste wi' his ee." 

How James Boyd fared, and what the outlaw said, and 
what James and his nobles said and did, and how the out- 
law at last made peace with his king, and rose up 
" Sheriffe of Ettricke Foreste," and how the bold ruffian 
boasted, 

" Fair Philiphaugh is mine by right. 
And Lewinshope still mine shall be; 
Newark, Foulshiels, and Tinnies baith 
My bow and arrow purchased m<». 



108 MINCHMOOR. 

" And I have native steads to me 

The Newark Lee o' Hangingshaw. 
I have n3any steads in the Forest schaw, 
But them by name I dinna knaw.'* 

And how King James snubbed 

" The kene Laird of Buckscleuth, 
A stalwart man and sterne was he.'* 

.Wlien the Laird hinted that, 

" For a king to gang an outlaw till 
Is beneath his state and dignitie. 
The man that wins yon forest intill 
He lives by reif and felony." 

" Then out and spak the nobil King, 
And round him cast a wilie ee. 

" Now haud thy tongue, Sir Walter Scott, 
Nor speak o' reif or felonie, — 
For^ had every honest man his awin %e, 
A richtpuir clan thy najne wud 6e / " 

(by the by, why did Professor Aytoun leave out this 
excellent hit in his edition ?) — all this and much more 
may you see if you take up The Border Minstrelsy^ and 
read " The Sang of the Outlaw Murray," with the incom- 
parable notes of Scott. But we are now well down the 
hill. There to the left, in the hollow, is Permanscore, 
where the King and the outlaw met, — 

"' Bid him mete me at Permanscore, 
And bring four in his companie ; 
Five Erles sail cum wi' mysel', 
Gude reason I suld honored be.'* 

And there goes our Shepherd with his long swinging 
stride. As different from his dark, wily companion, the 
Badenoch drover, as was Harry Wakefield from Eobin 
Oig ; or as the big, sunny Cheviot is from the lowering 



MINCHMOOR. 109 

Ruberslaw ; and there is Jed trotting meekly behind 
him, — may she escape strychnia, and, dying at the fire- 
side among the children, be laid like 

" Paddy Tims — whose soul at aise is — 
With the point of his nose 
And the tips of his toes 
Turned up to the roots of the daisies *' — 

unanaleezedj save by the slow cunning of the grave. And 
may her master get the top price for his lambs ! 

Do you see to the left that little plantation on the brow 
of Foulshiels Hill, with the sunlight lying on its upper 
corner ? If you were there you might find among the 
brackens and foxglove a little headstone with " I. T." 
rudely carved on it. That is Tihhie TamsorCs grave^ 
known and feared all the country round. 

This poor outcast was a Selkirk woman, who, under 
the stress of spiritual despair, — that sense of perdition, 
which, as in Cowper's case, often haunts and overmasters 
the deepest and gentlest natures, making them think 
themselves 

'* Damned below Judas, more abhorred than he was," 

committed suicide ; and being, with the gloomy, cruel 
superstition of the time, looked on by her neighbors as 
accursed of God, she was hurried into a rough white deal 
coffin, and carted out of the town, the people stoning it all 
the way till it crossed the Etterick. Here, on this wild 
hillside, it found its rest, being buried where three lairds' 
lands meet. May we trust that the light of God's recon- 
ciled countenance has for all these long years been rest- 
ing on that once forlorn soul, as his blessed sunshine now 
lies on her moorland grave ! For " the mountains shall 
depart, and the hills be removed ; but my kindness shall not 



110 MINCHMOOR. 

depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace 
be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." 

Now we see down into the Yarrow ; there is the fa- 
mous stream twinkling in the sun. What stream and 
valley was ever so be-sung ! You wonder at first why 
this has been, but the longer you look the less you won- 
der. There is a charm about it, — it is not easy to say 
what. The huge sunny hills in which it is embosomed 
give it a look at once gentle and serious. They are great, 
and their gentleness makes them greater. Wordsworth 
has the right words, "pastoral melancholy"; and besides, 
the region is " not uninformed with fantasy and looks that 
threaten the profane" — the Flowers of Yarrow, the 
Douglas Tragedy, the Dowie Dens, Wordsworth's Yar- 
row Un visited, Visited, and Revisited, and, above all, 
the glamour of Sir Walter, and Park's fatal and heroic 
story. Where can you find eight more exquisite lines 
anywhere than Logan's, which we all know by heart ? — 

" His mother from the window looked, 

With all the longing of a mother; 
His little sister, weeping, walked 

The greenwood path to meet her brother. 
They sought him east, they sought him west, 

They sought him all the forest thorough, — 
They only saw the cloud of night, 

They only heard the roar of Yarrow." 

And there is Newark Tower among the rich woods ; 
and Harehead^ that cosiest, loveliest, and hospitablest of 
nests. Methinks I hear certain young voices among the 
hazels ; out they come on the little haugh by the side of 
the deep, swirling stream, fahulosus as was ever Hydaspes. 
There they go " running races in their mirth," and is not 
that — an me ludit amahilis insania f — the voice of ma 
pauvre petite, — animosa infans — the wilful, rich-eyed, 
delicious Eppie ? 



MINCHMOOR. Ill 

" blessed visioD, happy child, 
Thou art so exquisitely wild ! " 

And there is Black Andro and Glowr owr^em and Foul- 
shieh, where Park was born and bred ; and there is the 
deep pool in the Yarrow where Scott found him plunging 
one stone after another into the water, and watching anx- 
iously the bubbles as they rose to the surface. '' This," 
said Scott to him, "appears but an idle amusement for 
one who has seen so much adventure." "Not so idle, 
perhaps, as you suppose," answered Mungo, "this was 
the way I used to ascertain the depth of a river in Af- 
rica." He was then meditating his second journey, but 
had said so to no one. 

We go down by Broadmeadows^ now held by that Yair 
" Hoppringle," — who so well governed Scinde, — and into 
the grounds of Bowhill, and passing Philiphaugh, see 
where stout David Lesly crossed in the mist at daybreak 
with his heavy dragoons, many of them old soldiers of 
Gustavus, and routed the gallant Graeme ; and there is 
Slainmen^s Lee, where the royalists lie ; and there is Car- 
terhaugh, the scene of the strange wild story of Tamlane 
and Lady Janet, when 

^* She prinked hersell and prinned hersell 
By the ae light of the moon, 
And she 's awa' to Carterhaugh 
To speak wi' young Tamlane.'* 

Noel Paton might paint that night, when 

" 'Twixt the hours of twelve and yin 
A north wind tore the bent " ; — 

when " fair Janet " in her green mantle 

Upon 1 
And straightway 



" heard strange elritch sounds 
Upon the wind that went." 



112 MINCHMOOR. 

" About the dead hour o* the night 
She heard the bridles ring ; 

" Their oaten pipes blew wondrous, shrill, 
The hemlock small blew clear; 
And louder notes from hemlock large 
And bog reed, struck the ear," 

and then the fairy cavalcade swept past, while Janet, filled 
with love and fear, looked out for the milk-white steed, 
and "gruppit it fast," and "pu'd the rider doon," the young 
Tamlane, whom, after dipping "in a stand of milk and 
then in a stand of water," 

" She wrappit ticht in her green mantle, 
And sae her true love won ! " 

This ended our walk. We found the carriage at the 
Philiphaugh home-farm, and we drove home by Yair and 
Fernilee^ Ashestiel and Elihank^ and passed the bears as 
ferocious as ever, " the orange sky of evening " glowing 
through their wild tusks, the old house looking even older 
in the fading light. And is not this a walk worth mak- 
ing? One of our number had been at the Land's End 
and Johnnie Groat's, and now on Minchmoor; and we 
wondered how many other men had been at all the three, 
and how many had enjoyed Minchmoor more than he. 



But we must end, and how can we do it better, and 
more to our readers' and our own satisfaction, than by 
giving them the following unpublished lines by Professor 
Shairp,* which, by means we do not care to mention, are 
now before us ? — 

* No longer unpublished. The reader will find them, along with 
much else that is delightful, in Kilmahoe, a Highland Pastoral^ with 
oilier Poems. 



MINCHMOOR. 113 



THE BUSH ABOON TRAQUAIR. 

Will ye gang wi' me and fare 

To the bush aboon Traquair ? 
Owre the high Minchmuir we '11 up and awa', 

This bonny simmer noon, 

While the sun shines fair aboon, 
And the licht sklents saftly doun on holm and ha'. 

And what wad ye do there, 

At the bush aboon Traquair? 
A lang dreich road, ye had better let it be ; 

Save some auld scrunts o' birk 

r the hillside lirk,* 
There 's nocht i' the warld for man to see. 

But the blythe lilt o' that air, 

** The Bush aboon Traquair," 
I need nae mair, it 's eneuch for me; 

Owre my cradle its sweet chime 

Cam sughin' frae auld time, 
Sae tide what may, I '11 awa' and see. 

And what saw ye there, 

At the bush aboon Traquair ? 
Or what did ye hear that was worth your heed ? 

I heard the cushies croon 

Thro' the gowden afternoon. 
And the Quair bum singing doun to the vale o' Tweed. 

And birks saw I three or four, 

Wi' gray moss bearded owre, 
The last that are left o' the birken shaw, 

Whar mony a simmer e'en 

Fond lovers did convene, 
Thae bonny, bonny gloamins that are lang awa*. 

Frae mony a but and ben. 
By muirland, holm, and glen. 
They cam ane hour to spen' on the greenwood swaird ; 

* " The hills were high on ilka side, 

And the bucht i' the lirk o' the hiliy 

Ballad of Cowdenknowes, 



114 MINCHMOOR. 

But lang ha'e lad an' lass 
Been lying 'neth the grass, 
The green, green grass o* Traquair kirkyard. 

They were blest beyond compare, 

When they held their tiysting there, 
Amang thae greenest hills shone on by the sun; 

And then they wan a rest, 

The lownest and the best, 
I' Traquair kirkyard when a' was dune. 

Now the birks to dust may rot, 

Names o' luvers be forgot, 
Nae lads and lasses there ony mair convene ; 

But the blythe lilt o' yon air 

Keeps the bush aboon Traquair, 
And the luve that ance was there, aye fresh and green. 

Have not these the true flavor of that gentle place and 
life, — as musical and as melancholy as their streams and 
glens, as fragrant as their birks and gale ? " * They have 
the unexpectedness of nature, of genius, and of true song. 
The " native wood-notes wild " of " the mountain nymph, 
sweet Liberty." 

There must surely be more of this " lilting*' in our 
minstrel's wallet ; and he may be assured that such a gift 
of genuine Scottish feeling and verse will be welcomed if 
revealed. It breathes the caller, strong air of the south 
country hills, and is a wild "flouir o' the forest" not 
likely soon to be " wede awae." 

" Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass, 
Yellow on Yarrow's banks the gowan, 
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, 
Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan. 

Flows Yarrow sweet ? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed, 

As green its grass, its gowan yellow, 
As sweet smells on its braes the birk, 

The apple frae the rook as mellow." 

August, 1862. 

* The Bog-Myrtle. 



THE ENTERKIN. 





THE ENTERKIN. 




F you have a holiday, and can trust your 
aneroid when it promises fair, — if you can 
do twenty-one miles in seven hours, and wish, 
moreever, to see what you never saw before, 
and what you will never forget, — then take six brown 
biscuits in your pocket, and a return ticket to Ahington^ 
on the Caledonian, starting at 6.20 A. M. 

There is not much from Edinburgh to Abington that 
everybody does not know ; but as you pass Kirknewton 
you will not be the worse of remembering that the beau- 
tiful little wooded glen — " dingle or bushy dell or bosky 
bourne " — on the left, into whose recesses you get a 
brief, surreptitious glimpse, with the young Gogar trot- 
ting cheerily through it, is the once famous " procul 
NEGOTiis " of the great philosophic physician Dr. Cul- 
len, where it was his delight to walk, and muse, and 
delve. You may see the maze of his walks still. It was 
part of his little estate of Ormiston Hill. Behind the 
present handsome and sensible mansion the old house 
may still be seen, with its magnificent outlook across the 
Vale of the Almond to the Ochils, and the outlying 
Grampians from Benlomond to Schehallion, and across 
the Firth to Benarty and the Lomonds ; above its door 
are the words " est ulubris," from the well-known 
lines : — 



118 THE ENTERKIN. 

" Coelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt ; 
Strenua nos exercet inertia : navibus atque 
Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Quod petis hie est; 
Est Ulubris, animus si non deficit gequus." 

This is untranslatable, but we give its bones : "It is clime, 
not character they change, who run across the sea; a 
strenuous idleness keeps us at work ; in our yachts and 
' drags ' we seek a happy life. What you seek, is here. 
Even in this our Ulubrae, — our own homely out-of-the- 
way Ormiston Hill, if we but bring with us the even 
mind." It is pleasant to think of this great old Doctor, 
leaving his town work and books, and giving himself up 
to gardening, — the records of which, in outlandish plants 
and shrubs, still remain, — and to farming, testing those 
original speculations as to soils and manures which he 
expounded in his lectures on chemistry, and which were 
in much anticipatory of the new doctrines and practice. 
You may — to while away the time past Carnwath and 
its dreary Lang Whang — fancy the old Doctor, as Dr. 
Benjamin Rush sketches him, — " tall and slender, and 
with a stoop in his shoulders, his face long, his under lip 
protruded a little beyond the upper, his nose large, and 
inclined to point downwards, his eye of a blue color, pen- 
etrating but soft, and on his whole face an air of mildness 
and thought," — walking in his glen, and repeating to 
himself or to a friend his favorite beatitude of the old 
usurer, — " Beatus ilk qui procul negotiis/^ etc., or that of 
Politian : — 

" Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis, 
Quern non mendaci resplendens gloria fuco 
Solicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus. 
Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu 
Exigit innocuse tranquilla silentia vitse.'* 

We are glad, by the by, to learn that our College of 



THE ENTERKIN. 119 

Physicians is about to repair the tomb of this, one of 
their greatest fellows ; it is in the old burying-ground 
of Kii'knewton, and had fallen sadly into ruin and for- 
getfulness. 

We are now past Carnwath, and got to that station 
which a shivering Cockney, who was kept waiting some 
hours on a windy winter night in the old shed, said was 
well-named Ourst airs (Carstairs), and past Thankerton, 
— Tancred's Town, — and Symington, — Symon's, — and 
are at Abington before nine. There is Mrs. Hunter's 
comfortable little roadside inn, where, in the Eglinton 
Tournament year, the present Emperor of the French 
arrived one evening alone, wet, hungry, and weary, hav- 
ing been grouse-shooting all day on Crawford Muir. He 
asked for a room, but was told the only one was occupied 
by some young men who were surveying the Caledonian 
line. He sent up his card asking to be allowed to join 
them, and was requested to go to the place whence Mr. 
Kinglake seems to think his Majesty has a return ticket. 
He sat down by the kitchen fire, got his supper, slipped 
away to bed, and was off early next morning on foot. 

You now take the road to Leadhills by the Glengonar 
Burn, which, like the river Pison in the Eden of Gene- 
sis, " compasses the land where there is gold." Indeed, 
this region was called in olden times " God's treasure- 
house in Scotland," and the four petty burns in which the 
precious yellow grains were found — Glengonar, Short 
Cleuch, Mennock, and Wanlock — were compared to the 
four rivers in the Garden of the Lord, — Pison, Gihon, 
Hiddekel, and Euphrates ! Here was got the gold of 
which King James's honnet-fieces were made, hundreds of 
workmen being then employed in its search. The glit- 
tering sand is still occasionally to be found, and every 



120 THE ENTERKIN. 

now and then a miner, smit with the sacred hunger, takes 
to the deluding, feckless work, and seldom settles to any- 
thing again. 

It is six miles of a pleasant glen road from Abington 
to Leadhills, — a dreary, unexpected little town, — which 
has lain great part in ruins for many years, owing to the 
suspension or spiritless working of the mines, during a 
long, baffling House of Lords lawsuit. Things are better 
now under the new company, and we may soon see it as 
tidy and purpose-like as the Duke's neighboring Wan- 
lockhead. The people are thoughtful and solid, great 
readers and church-goers. They have a capital library. 
Like all natives of such forlorn, out-of-the- world pleacs, 
they cannot understand how any one can be happy any- 
where else; and when one of them leaves the wild, 
unlovely place, they accompany him with wondering pity 
to the outskirts of their paradise, and never cease to im- 
plore and expect his return for good. 

If you have a keen eye, you will not fail to observe 
something you never before did n't see in a Scottish vil- 
lage. There are the usual dogs and children about the 
doors, but there is not a hen to be seen ! — they would be 
all poisoned by the lead in the gravel they pick up. 

You are now some twelve hundred feet above the sea, 
and as you pass the door of the good doctor, — an old 
Peninsular surgeon, and a thoroughbred gentleman, who 
has returned to his birthplace, and is the honored friend 
and healer of that solitary upland, — you may see what is 
now a broken-down byre, in which the author of The 
Gentle Shepherd was born. 

Take now the road to the left ; the other goes to Wan- 
lockhead and down Mennock to Sanquhar; yours leads 
you by the shoulder of the huge Lowthers through the 



THE ENTERKIN. 121 

Enterkin Pass to Durrisdeer and Dalveen. The road is 
little more than a bridle one. You ascend steadily and 
gently to a great height, the high hills lying all around, — 
not sharp and ridgy like the Highland mountains, " curl- 
ing their monstrous heads, and hanging them," like 
the fierce uplifted waves of a prodigious sea, — they 
are more like round-backed, lazy billows in the after- 
swell of a storm, as if tumbling about in their sleep. 
They have all a sonsy, good-humored, hiiirdly look. As 
compared with Ben Lomond, our young Jacobus pro- 
nounced them " slow." This must, however, be a peril- 
ous road in snow and drift ; for we passed several cairns^ 
marking where some shepherd or bewildered traveller 
had stumbled on, blinded and sleepy, and taken his final 
rest. 

The east side of the Lowthers is an easy ascent, and 
the effect of this vast expanse, stretching miles in smooth- 
est surface, when covered with new-fallen snow, is said 
to be wonderful ; shapely and rounded like some great 
recumbent creature, " white, radiant, spotless." At this 
time of the year, as we saw it, covered with thick, short, 
tawny grass and moss, one unbroken surface to the 
summit of two thousand three hundred and seventy-seven 
feet, it was like the short, close-grained fur of a lioness, 
— the hills lying like her cubs, huddling round their 
mighty mother. On its summit the counties of Lanark 
and Dumfries meet, as also three lairds' lands, and here 
it was the custom, up to ^^X:^ years ago, to bury suicides. 
Any more solitary and out-of-the-world place could 
hardly be conceived. The bodies were brought from 
great distances all around, and, in accordance with the 
dark superstitions of the time, the unblest corpse was 
treated with curious indignity, — no dressing with grave- 
6 



122 THE ENTERKIN. 

clothes, no striehing of the pitiful limbs ; the body was 
thrust, with the clothes it was found in, into a rude box, 
not even shaped like a coffin, and hurried away on 
some old shattered cart or sledge, with ropes for har- 
ness. 

One can imagine the miserable procession as it slunk, 
often during night, through the villages, and past the 
farmsteads, every one turning from it as abhorred. Then, 
arrived at this high and desolate region, the horse was 
taken out, and the weary burden dragged with pain up 
to its resting-place, and carried headforemost as in 
despite ; then a shallow hole dug, and the long, uncouth 
box pushed in, — the cart and harness left to rot as ac- 
cursed. The white human bones may sometimes be seen 
among the thick, short grass; and one who was there 
more than fifty years ago remembers with a shudder still, 
coming ^ — when crossing that hill-top — upon a small 
outstretched hand, as of one crying from the ground; 
this one little hand, with its thin fingers held up to 
heaven as if in an agony of supplication or despair. 
What a sight, seen against the spotless sky, or crossing 
the disk of the waning moon ! 

We are now nearing the famous Enterkin Pass ; a few 
steps and you are on its edge, looking down giddy and 
amazed into its sudden and immense depths. We have 
seen many of our most remarkable glens and mountain 
gorges, — Glencroe and Glencoe, — Glen Nevis, — the 
noblest of them all, — the Sma' Glen, Wordsworth's 
Glen Almain (Glen almond), where Ossian sleeps, the 
lower part of Glen Lyon, and many others of all kinds 
of sublimity and beauty; but we know nothing more 
noticeable, more unlike any other place, more impressive, 
than this short, deep, narrow, and sudden glen. There is 



THE ENTERKIN. 123 

only room for its own stream and its bottom, and the 
sides rise in one smooth and all but perpendicular ascent 
to the height, on the left, of one thousand eight hundred 
and ninety-five feet, Thirstane Hill, and on the right, of 
one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five, the ex- 
quisitely moulded Stey Gail, or Steep Gable, — so steep 
that it is no easy matter keeping your feet, and if you 
slip you might just as well go over a bona fide mural 
precipice. " Commodore Rogers " would feel quite at 
home here ; we all know his merits : — 

*' Commodore Eogers was a man, — exceedingly brave, — particular; 
He climbed up very high rocks, — exceedingly high, — perpendicular ; 
And what made this the more inexpressible, 
These same rocks were quite inaccessible." 

This sense of personal fear has a finely idealistic effect 
upon the mind, makes it impressionable and soft, and 
greatly promotes the after-enjoyment of the visit. The 
aforesaid Stey Gail makes one dizzy to look at, — such 
an expanse of sheer descent. If a sheep dies when on its 
sides it never lies still, but tumbles down into the burn ; 
and when we were told that Grierson of Lagg once rode 
at full gallop along its slope after a fox, one feels it 
necessary to believe that either he or his horse were of 
Satanic lineage. No canny man or horse could do this 
and live. 

After our first surprise, we were greatly struck with 
the likeness of the place to a picture of it by Mr. Har- 
vey, exhibited in our Academy in 1846, and now in Mr. 
Campbell of Blythswood's collection. This was one of 
this great painter's first landscapes, and gives the spirit, 
the idea of the place with wonderful truth and beauty, — 
its solemnity and loneliness, its still power, its gentle 
gloom, its de|:)th and height, its unity, its sacred peace, — 



124 THE ENTERKIN. 

*' It is not quiet, is not ease, 
But something deeper far than these, 
The separation that is here 
Is of the grave ; and of austere, 
Yet happy feelings of the dead." 

We have heard that the artist, who sat alone for hours 
sketching, got so eerie, so overpowered with the loneli- 
ness and silence, that he relieved himself from time to 
time by loud shouts, and was glad to hear his own voice 
or anything. It must be a wonderful place to be alone 
in on a midsummer's midnight, or at its not less witching 
noon, — 

" In such a glen as this, on such a day, 
A poet might in solitude recline. 
And, while the hours unheeded stole away, 

Gather rich fancies in the art divine. 
Great thoughts that float through Nature's silent air, 
And fill the soul with hope and love and prayer." 

The glen is peculiar in being closed in, to all appear- 
ance, as much at the lower as the upper end: you feel 
utterly shut in and shut out. Half-way down is a wild 
cascade called Kelte's Linn, — from Captain Kelte, one 
of Claverhouse's dragoons, who was killed here. 

Defoe's account of the affair and of its wild scene, in 
his Memoirs of the Church of Scotland, is so homely and 
to the quick, that we give it in full. It is not unworthy 
of Robinson Crusoe, and is unexaggerated in local de- 
scription : — 

" This Entrehein is a very steep, and dangerous Moun- 
tain ; nor could such another Place have been easily 
found in the whole Country for their Purpose ; and, had 
not the Dragoons been infatuated from Heaven, they 
would never have entered such a Pass, without well dis- 
covering the Hill above them. The Road for above a 



THE ENTERKIN. 125 

Mile goes winding, with a moderate Ascent on the side 
of a very high, and very steep Hill, 'till on the latter 
part, still ascending and the Height on the left above 
them being still vastly great, the Depth on their right 
below them makes a prodigious Precipice, descending 
steep and ghastly into a narrow deep Bottom, only broad 
enough for the Current of Water to run that descends 
upon hasty Rain : From this Bottom the Mountain rises 
instantly again steep as a Precipice on the other side of 
a stupendous Height. The passage on the side of the 
first Hill, by which, as I said, the Way creeps gradually 
up, is narrow ; so that two Horsemen can but ill pass in 
Front : And, if any Disorder should happen to them, so 
as that they step but a little a-wry, they are in danger of 
falling down the said Precipice on their right, where 
there would be no stopping 'till they came to the Bottom. 
And the writer of this has seen, by the Accident only 
of a sudden Frost, which had made the way slippery, 3 
or 4 Horses at a Time of Travellers or Carryers lying in 
that dismal Bottom, which slipping in their v/ay, have not 
been able to recover themselves, but have fallen down 
the Precipice, and rolled to the Bottom, perhaps, tum- 
bling 20 Times over, by which it is impossible but they 
must be broken to pieces, ere they come to stop. 

"• In this Way the Dragoons were blindly marching 2 
and 2 with the Minister and 5 Countrymen, whom they 
had taken Prisoners, and were hauling them along to 
Edinburgh; the Front of them being near the Top of 
the Hill, and the rest reaching all along the steep part ; 
when on a sudden they heard a Man's Voice calling to 
them from the side of the Hill on their left a great 
Height above them. 

''It was misty, as indeed it is seldom otherwise on 



126 THE ENTERKIN. 

the Height of that Mountain ; so that no Body was seen 
at first : But the Commanding Officer hearing some 
Body call, halted, and call'd aloud, What c?' ye want, and 
who are ye ? He had no sooner spoke, but 12 Men came 
in sight upon the side of the Hill above them, and the 
Officer call'd again. What are ye ? and bad Stand : One 
of the 12 answered by giving the Word of Command to 
his Men, Make Beady ; and then calling to the Officer, 
said. Sir J Will ye deliver our Minister"} The Officer 
answer'd with an Oath, No, Sir, an ye were to be damrCd. 
At which the Leader of the Countrymen fir'd imme- 
diately, and aim'd so true at him, tho' the Distance was 
pretty great, that he shot him thro' the Head, and imme- 
diately he fell from his Horse ; His Horse fluttering a 
little with the Fall of his Rider, fell over the Precipice, 
rolling to the Bottom, and was dash'd to pieces. 

" The rest of the 1 2 Men were stooping to give Fire 
upon the Body ; when the next Commanding Officer 
call'd to them to hold their Hands, and desir'd a Truce. 
It was apparent, that the whole Body was in a dreadful 
Consternation ; Not a Man of them durst stir a Foot, or 
offer to fire a Shot. And had the 12 Men given Fire 
upon them, the first Volley, in all Probability, would 
have driven 20 of them down the side of the Mountain 
into that dreadful Gulph at the Bottom. 

"To add to their Consternation, their 2 Scouts who 
rode before, gave them Notice, That there appear d 
another Body of Arm'd Conntrymen at the Top of the 
Hill in their front ; which however was nothing but 
some Travellers, who, seeing Troops of Horse coming 
up, stood there to let them pass, the Way being too nar- 
row to go by them : It 's true, there were about 25 more 
of the Countrymen in Arms, tho' they had not appear'd, 



THE ENTERKIN. 127 

and they had been sufficient, if they had thought fit, to 
have cut this whole Body of Horse in pieces. 

" But, the Officer having ask'd a Parley^ and demanded, 
What it was they would have f they again replied again. 
Deliver our Minister, Well, Sir, says the Officer, Te 's 
get your Minister, an ye will promise to foriear firing : 
Indeed we ^llforhear, says the good man, We desire to hurt 
none of ye : But, Sir, says he, Belike ye have more Pris- 
oners : Indeed have we, says the Officer, and ye mon 
deliver them all, says the honest Man. Well, says the 
Officer, Ye shall have them then. Immediately the Offi- 
cer calls to Bring forward the Minister : But the Way 
was so narrow and crooked he could not be brought up 
by a Horseman, without Danger of putting them into 
Disorder : So that the Officer bad them Loose him, and 
let him go ; which was done : So the Minister stept up 
the Hill a step or two, and stood still ; Then the Officer 
said to him. Sir, an I let you go, I expect you promise to 
oblige your People to offer no Hindrance to our March, 
The Minister promis'd them, He would do so. Then go, 
Sir, said he, Tou owe your Life to this Damn'd Moun- 
tain. Rather, Sir, said the Minister, to that God that 
made this Mountain. When their Minister was come to 
them, their Leader call'd again to the Officer, Sir, We 
want yet the other Prisoners. The Officer gave Orders 
to the Rear, where they w^ere, and they were also deliv- 
ered. Upon which the Leader began to march away, 
when the Officer call'd again. But hold. Sir, says he. Ye 
promised to he satisfied if ye had your Prisoners: I ex- 
pect you 'II he as good as your Word. Indeed shall I, says 
the Leader, I am just marching away ; it seems he did 
not rightly understand the Officer. Well, Sir, hut, says 
the OiHcer, I expect you call off those Fellows you Jiare 



128 THE ENTERKIN. 

posted at the Head of the Way. They belong not to us, 
says the honest Man, they are unarmed People, waiting 
tin you pass by. Say you so, said the Officer, Had I 
known that, you had not gotten your Men so cheap, or 
have come off so free : Says the Countryman, An ye are 
for Battle, Sir, We are ready for you still, if you think you 
are able for us, ye may trye your Hand; we ^11 quit the 
Truce, if you like. NO, says the Officer, / think ye be 
brave Fellows, e^en gang your Gater 

In his curious account of his travels in Scotland, Defoe 
gives a more detailed description of the glen and of his 
own visit to it, saying with true London naivete that 
the hills on each side " are nearly as high as the Monu- 
ment!"* 

We now escaped by a secret path which we defy the 

* " From Drumlanrig I took a Turn to see the famous Pass of 
Enterkin, or Inirokin HWl: It is indeed, not easy to describe; but by 
telling you that it ascends through a winding Bottom for near half a 
Mile, and a Stranger sees nothing terrible, but vast high Mountains on 
either -Hand, tho' all green, and with Sheep feeding on them to the 
very Top ; when, on a suddain, turning short to the left, and crossing 
a Rill of Water in the Bottom, you mount the Side of one of those 
Hills, while, as you go on, the Bottom in which that Water runs down 
from between the Hills, keeping its Level on your Right, begins to look 
very deep, till at Length it is a Precipice horrible and terrifying; on 
the left the Hill rises almost perpendicular, like a Wall; till being 
com.e about half Way, you have a steep, unpassable Height on the 
Left, and a monstrous Casm or Ditch on your Right; deep, almost, 
as the Monument is high, and the Path, or Way, just broad enough 
for you to lead your Horse on it, and, if his Foot slips, you 
have nothiog to do but let go the Bridle, lest he pulls you with him, 
and then you will have the Satisfaction of seeing him dash'd to 
Pieces, and lye at the Bottom with his four Shoes uppermost. I 
pass'd twice this Hill after this, but the Weather was good, and the 
Way dry, which made it safe; but one of our Company was so 
frighted with it, that in a Kind of an Extasy, when he got to the Bot- 
tom, he look'd back, and swore heartily that he would never come 
that Way again." 



THE ENTERKIN. 129 

uninitiated to discover — we had a mountain nymph to 
guide us — out of this strange, deep place, which, if it 
were any longer, would weigh the traveller down with 
its solemnity and seclusion — into Dalveen, down which 
flows the Carron, and the road from Edinburgh to Dum- 
fries, by Biggar and Thornhill. It is an exquisite scene, 
— great steep green hills opening and shutting the >vind- 
ing valley. It is well known as one of the finest and 
most romantic passes in the South of Scotland, — it must 
have been something worth one's while to descend it on 
the box seat in the old four-horse-coach days. It is six 
miles from Leadhills to Lower Dalveen, and nine from 
that to Elvanfoot, where you must catch the train due 
at 4.20, — most provokingly early. Any one fearing lest 
the twenty-one miles may be too much for his legs or his 
time, may shorten the walk two or more miles by going to 
Elvanfoot and walking up the Elvan, instead of the Glen- 
gonar Burn. If he has our sky and our willingness to be 
happy, he will mark the Enterkin day with a white stone. 

We have said that the miners at Leadhills are a read- 
ing, a hard-reading people; and to any one looking into 
the catalogue of their " Reading Society," selected by the 
men themselves for their own uses and tastes, this will be 
manifest. We have no small gratification in holding their 
diploma of honorary membership, — signed by the preses 
and clerk, and having the official seal, significant of the 
craft of the place, — of this, we venture to say, one of 
the oldest and best village libraries in the kingdom, hav- 
ing been founded in 1741, when the worthy miners of 
that day, headed by James Wells and clerked by William 
Wright, did, on the 23d November, " condescend upon 
certain articles and laws" — as grave and thorough as if 
6* I 



130 THE ENTERKIN. 

they were the constitution of a commonwealth, ana as 
sturdily independent as if no Earl was their superior and 
master. " It is hereby declared that no right is hereby 
given, nor shall at any time be given to the said Earl of 
Hopetoun, or his aforesaids, or to any person or persons 
whatever, of disposing of any books or other effects what- 
ever belonging to the Society, nor of taking any concern 
with the Society's affairs," etc. As an indication of the 
wild region and the distances travelled, one of the rules is, 
"that every member not residing in Leadhills shall be 
provided with a bag sufficient to keep out the rain." 
Here is the stiff, covenanting dignity cropping out, — 
" Every member shall (at the annual meeting) deliver 
what he hath to say to the preses ; and if two or more 
members attempt to speak at a time, the preses shall 
determine who shall speak first " ; and " members guilty 
of indecency, or unruly, obstinate behavior," are to be 
punished " by fine, suspension, or exclusion, according to 
the nature of the transgression." The Westminster 
Divines could not have made a tighter job. 

If Charles Lamb had, by any strange chance, — such 
as dropping from a balloon, hailing from Hampstead, — 
strayed into this reading and howhing village, and put up 
at Mr. Noble's for a day or two, with his pipe (of peace 
and more, for he used to say with a sad smile between 
the earnest puffs, "- Other men smoke for pleasure ; I 
(puff) smoke (puff) for my (puff) sal- (puff) va-va-va- 
tion," * ) well-provisioned, and a modicum of old Madeira 

* " When Dr. Parr, — who took only the finest tobacco, used to 
half fill his pipe with salt, and smoked with a philosophic calmness, 
— saw Lamb smoking the strongest preparation of the weed, puffing 
ont smoke like some furious enchanter, he gently laid down his pipe 
and asked how he had acquired his power of smoking at such a rate? 
Lamb replied, ' I toiled after it, Sir, as some men toil after virtue.^ " — 
Talfourd's Life of Lamb, 



THE ENTERKIN. 131 

and Hollands, and had he been driven into his inn by 
stress of weather and fear of the mountains (we all 
remember how, when visiting Southey at Keswick, he 
ran away from Skiddaw and the rest of the big fellows, 
back to " the sweet security of streets "), — how he would 
have enjoyed this homely, workingman's library with its 
twenty-two hundred volumes ! Fancy him and " Papa- 
verius " (De Quincey) and " The Bookhunter " storm- 
stayed, all three here, and discussing over their toddy, and 
through their fragrant reek, its multifarious books, from 
Cudworth's "Intellectual System," and Grotius "On 
Christianity," to Spurgeon's " Gems " and Wylie's 
" Seventh Vial." Fancy Carloagnulus beseeching The 
Bookhunter to enlighten him upon the Marrow Contro- 
versy, and the Old and New Lights, and the Burghers 
and Antiburghers, the Glassites, Sandemanians, Camero- 
nians, and U. P.'s ; and " Papaverius " entering cmiously 
and delectably upon King's " Origin of Evil," Thomas a 
Kempis, or " Aspasia Vindicated." To hear " Elia " * 
inquiring mildly and stammeringly at The Bookhunter, 
as he turned over Erskine's " Principles of the Law of 
Scotland," whether " multiple-poinding " was a phrase 
which his friend Pierce Egan — historian of the prize- 
ring — might not advantageously adopt ; and during the 
mixing of another tumbler, asking his opinion as to the 
two Histories of the Concilium Tridentinum^ in order to 
edge in a small joke of Burton-upon-Trent. Then think 
of the three discussing, with a single dip and a blazing 
fire, " Humphrey Clinker," " The Adventures of a 
Guinea," and "The Bravo of Bohemia." Fancy their 
awe when they found upwards of one hundred and forty 
volumes of sermons, graduating from Butler, Sterne, 

* See note, p. 132. 



132 THE ENTERKIN. 

Horslej, and Robert Hall, down to Drs. Dodd and Gum- 
ming. How Charles' would expatiate upon " Queen 
Street, a poem," — what " on earth " it might mean and 
what it might not ; — how curious he would be upon 
Clarke's "Hundred Wonders" and "Extracts of C. L., 
Esq.," — were these his Essays taken down in his sleep, 
— all unbeknown to himself? Who w:rote "Juniper 
Jack " ? and " The Land of Sinim " ? and who ever al- 
lowed " Count Fathom " to slip into such decent com- 
pany ? But seriously, we have been greatly struck with 
the range of subjects and of authors in this homely cata- 
logue ; and it is impossible to think with anything but 
respect of the stout-hearted, strong-brained men who, 
after being in the bowels of the earth all day, sat down 
to wrestle with John Owen or Richard Baxter, or dream 
of heaven and holiness with Scougall and Leighton, or 
refresh themselves with Don Quixote, the Antiquary, the 
Fool of Quality, and Daubuisson on "The Basalts of 
Saxony," — besides eviscerating, with the help of Jona- 
than Edwards and Andrew Fuller, their own gloomy and 
masculine theology as mercilessly as they did the stub- 
born galena and quartz. 



NOTE BY "THE BOOKHUNTER '» ON PAPAVERIUS. 

Papaverius would have scunnered at the decent " good book '* ap- 
pearance of Fisher's " Marrow," or Gibb's " Display of the Secession 
Testimony." To bring him round about to the manner by a learned- 
like congenial path, I would have put into his hands, to bring him up 
to the seventeenth century, the " Tremulantes sivi QuaJceri,'' and the 
IndependenteSj by means of " Speculum Abominaiionum,^^ and then have 
shipped him in the " Histoire des Sectes Religieuses " of Bishop 
Gregoire, where he would have found " Metliodistes, Seceders, Burgh- 
ers, Reliefs, Bereans, Glassites, Balchristes, Hutchensonians, Tunkers, 
Shakers, Skevi-kares, Buchanistes, Brugglerians, Mamillaires, Ven- 
clioristes," with others equally familiar and unfamiliar, all discussed 
in fluent French. 



THE ENTERKIN. 133 



SINCE our Leadhills ploy, four of us met one Sep- 
tember morning at Abington to breakfast, and took 
our way up Camps Water and down Glen Breck into 
Tweed. It was a gray, demure day, gentle and serious, 

— " caught at the point where it stops short of sadness ' ■ ; 
the clouds well up and curdled, — lying becalmed 

" O'er the broad fields of heaven's bright wildernesse " ; 

what of sunshine there was lay on the distant hills, mov- 
ing slowly, and every now and then making darker the 
depths of some far-off Hope, There is something marvel- 
lous in the silence of these upland solitudes ; the burns 
slip away without noise ; there are no trees, few birds ; 
and it so happened that the sheep were nibbling else- 
where, and the shepherds all unseen. There was only 
" the weird sound of its own stillness," as we walked up 
the glen. It was refreshing and reassuring, after the din 
of the town, this out-of-the-world, unchangeable place. 

We got upon the Moffat road two or three miles above 
Tweedsmuir Kirk ; and one of us, who had not been 
there for three-and-thirty years, — when, taking his time, 
he walked from Edinburgh to Kendal and back again, 

— could not but be moved at the deserted look of that 
old mail road, — hardly a trace of wheels, — like the bed 
of a stream that has ceased to flow, — " the sound of a 
voice that is still." Nature winning it back to herself. 
Fancy the glory of coming there upon the well-appointed 
Royal Mail, with the music of its team, the guard on his 
little seat, with its black, hairy skin, his horn, and his tre- 
mendous blunderbuss. What compactness ! what a unity, 
power, and purpose about the whole organism ! what 
stories we used to hear of what the driver could do, and 



134 THE ENTERKIN. 

what the guard had done.* How Willie Lawson snuffed 
a candle, and not out, with his whip at Penicuik Inn, on 
a " lown " night before starting. How the guard, having 
in vain sounded his horn at Harestanes toll, when some 
disorderly coal-carts were stopping the royal way, their 
carters drinking, heedless inside, — blew out the brains 
of the first horse, and got the gate cleared forthwith. 
And what a peremptory, " dread '' horn it was, bringing 
somehow Fontarabia into the school-boy head. 

One guard I remember well, — M' George. He had 
been in the army, and was a gentleman, — stern and not 
given to speak ; even with his companion the driver he 
would let a whole day pass in silence, — a handsome, firm, 
keen face. I remember well, too, when I had gone 
day after day to meet the Mail, to be taken into Edin- 
burgh to school after my vacation among the hills, and 
to my rapture the Mail was full, and we came back 
rejoicing at the respite. " Is she full ? " asked again my 
grave and dear old uncle, six feet and more on his soles. 
" Yes," said M' George, with a gentle grin, and looking 
me in the face ; " she 's full of emptiness ! " whereupon 
the High-School boy was bundled inside, and left to his 
meditations. Our guard, I must say, came and looked 
in upon me at each stage, comforting me greatly with 
some jargonelle pears, the smell and relish of which I 
can feel now. I fell asleep, of course, and when we stop- 
ped at the Black Bull, found myself snug in the poten- 
tate's great-coat. All this impressed me the more, when 
I heard of his death many years after. It was a snow- 

* An Edinburgh clergyman, of a rare and quaint genius, was one 
day seen gazing at the Carlisle Mail as it came thundering down The 
Bridges. " What are you thinking of ? " said a reverend brother. 
" I 'm thinkin' that, next to preachin' the everlastin' Gospel, I would 
like to drive the Mail." 



THE ENTERKIN. 135 

Storm, — a night of wild drift, — in mid- winter : nothing 
like it for years. The Mail from Dumfries was late, and 
the towns-people of Moffat had gath^ered at Mrs. Crans- 
toun's inn waiting for it. Up it came. They crowded 
round M' George, entreating him not to proceed, — "At 
Tweedshaws it'll be awful." But he put them aside. 
" They " (meaning the Post-Office authorities) " blamed 
me once ; they '11 never blame me again." And, saddling 
the two strongest horses, he and the driver mounted and 
took their way into the night, stumbling dumbly up the 
street. The driver returned, having, at the Beef-stand^ 
— a wild hollow in the hills, five miles out of Moffat, — 
given it up in despair, and in time ; M' George plunging 
on, and not to be spoken to. The riderless horse came 
back at midnight. Next morning at daybreak, — the 
wind hushed, the whole country silent and white, — a 
shepherd saw on the heights at Tweedshaws something 
bright like a flame. He made his way to it, — it was 
the morning sun shining on the brass-plate of the post- 
bags, hung up on a bit of paling, — we have seen the 
very stake, — and out of the snow stretched a hand, as if 
pointing to the bags: M'George dead, and as the shep- 
herd said, ''wi' a kind o' a pleesure on his face." 

" Stern daughter of the voice of God, 
We know not anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face." * 

From Tweedsmuir we walked by the Bield, the old 
inn, where the Moffat carriers baited or slept ; and could 
not help recalling a story worthy of Humphrey Clinker. 
Campbell the poet, in his young days, had walked out 
thus far, and had got snug into bed after his tumbler of 
toddy, when there was a knock at the door. " Come 

* Wordsworth's Ode to Duty, 



136 THE ENTERKIN. 

in " ; and behold, with a candle in her hand, stood the 
pretty maiden — who had given him his supper — in her 
short-gown and petticoat. " Please, sir, could ye tak' a 
neebor into yer bed ? " " With all my heart," said the 
imaginative, susceptible poet, starting gayly up. " Thank 
ye, sir, for the Moffat carrier's just come in a' wat, and 
there 's no a single ither place." Up came the huge and 
reeking man ; exit the dainty little woman. 

There, on the river side, is where once was Linkum- 
doddie^ where Willie Wastle dwelt. There is the Logan 
Water^ which, with superb exaggeration, the poet says 
Willie's wife's face " wad file." 

There is Mossfennan " yett," where " lichtit doon " the 
lovers of the Lass of the Logan-lea. This ballad, which 
is still remembered as being sung entire, is gone, we fear 
irrecoverably, all but a few broken stanzas, for which we 
have to thank Miss Watson, who, in her Bygone Days 
in our Village^ has so well described the old-world life of 
this pastoral region : — 

*' Some say that I lo'e young Polmood, 
An' some say he lo'es na me; 
But I thmk 1 'm a match for the best o' his blude, 
Though I had never a ewe on the Logan-lea. 

" For wooers I 've had braw young men, 
Booted and spurred as ye may see, 
A' lichtin at Mossfennan yett, 

Doon by the side o' the Logan-lea. 

" Three cam east, and three cam west, 

An' three cam out frae the north countrie, 
The lave cam a' frae Moffat-side, 
An' lichtit at the Logan-lea. 

" John Paterson comes frae Holms-water head, 
An' he did come to visit me. 
An' he cam in by the Mere-cleugh head, 
Wi' his spotted hounds and spaniels three. 



THE ENTERKIN. 137 

*' Graham o' Slipperfield, on his gray mere, 
Charlie, an' his pistols clear, 
Young Polmood, wi' his hounds three, 
Will ne'er heir a ewe on the Logan-lea." 

We closed our Minchmoor with The Bush ahoon Tra- 
quair ; we close The Enterkin with the Cry from 
Craigellachie^ which our companion the author recited 
with impassioned cadence, as we walked down Tweed 
to Broughton. After much urgency, we got him to put 
it in the Scotsman, from which we now take it. 

May we not enjoy its fervor and beauty, and at the 
same time rejoice that the cottagers at Kingussie are get- 
ting their oatmeal and coals one half cheaper, since the 
iron horse took his way down Badenoch ? 



A CRY FROM C R AIGELL A C H I E. 

(Written after travelling for the first time to Inverness by the Highland 
Railway, last August.) 

Land of Bens, and Glens, and Corries, 

Headlong rivers, ocean-floods ! 
Have we lived to see this outrage 

On your haughty solitudes ? 

Yea ! there burst invaders stronger, 
On the mountain-barriered land, 
Than the Ironsides of Cromwell, 
■ Or the bloody Cumberland ! 

Spanning Tay and curbing Tummel, 
Hewing with rude mattocks down 

Killiecrankie's birchen chasm, — 
What reck they of old renown ! 

Cherished names! how disenchanted I 

Hark the railway porter roar, 
Ho! Blair- Athole ! Dalnaspidal! 

Ho! Dalwhinnie! Aviemorel 



138 THE ENTERKIN. 

Garry, cribbed with mound and rampart, 

Up his chafing bed we sweep, 
Scare from his lone lochan-cradle 

The charmed immemorial sleep. 

Grisly, storm-resounding Badenoch, 
With gray boulders scattered o'er, 

And cairns of forgotten battles, 
Is a wilderness no more. 

Ha ! we start the ancient silence, 
Thundering down the long incline 

Over Spey and Rothiemurchus' 
Forests of primeval pine. 

Boar of Badenoch ! Sow of Athole ! 

Hill by hill behind us cast ; 
Rock, and craig, and moorland reeling — 

Scarce Craigellachie stands fast.* 

Dark Glen More and clov'n Glen Feshie, 
Loud along these desolate tracts, 

Hear the shriek of whistle louder 
Than their headlong cataracts. 

Strange to them the train, — but stranger 
The mixed throng it huddles forth, — 

Strand and Piccadilly emptied 
On the much-enduring North. 

Cockneys, Frenchmen, swells, and tourists, 
Motley-garbed and garish crew ! 

Belted pouches, knickerbockers, 
Silken hose and patent shoe. 

While from carriage-window gazing, 
Eye-glassed damsels, yawning, drawl, 

" Strange these names of yours, — Braeriach, 
Ben-Mac-Dhui, Cairntoul." 

What to them are birk-tree fragrance 
Pine- wood scents, bog-myrtle balm ! 

What the burns down corries sounding. 
Or the solemn mountain calm ! 

* " Stand fast, Craigellachie/' is the war-cry of the Clan Grant. 



THE ENTERKIN. 139 

Point not them to Lock-an-Eilan, 

Lochindorbh's grim island hold; 
Tell them not wild tales of Comyn, 

Or the Badenoch Wolf of old. 

Cairngorum! BraeriachI 

Roll ye blinding swathes of cloud 
Down your crags, that these insult not 

Your majestic foreheads proud. 

On, still on, — let drear CuUoden 

For clan-slogans hear this scream, — 
Shake the woods by Beauly river, 

Startle beauty-haunted Dhruim. 

Northward still the iron horses, 

Naught may stay their destined path, 
Till their snort, by Pentland surges, 

Stun the cliffs of far Cape Wrath. 



Must then pass, quite disappearing 
From their glens, the ancient Gael? 

In and in must Saxon struggle? 
Southron, Cockney more prevail? 

Clans long gone, and pibrochs going, 

Shall the patriarchal tongue 
From these mountains fade forever, 

With its names and memories hung ? 

Oh ! you say, it little recketh, — 

Let the ancient manners go, 
Heaven will work, through their destroying, 

Some end greater than you know ! 

Be it so ! but will Invention, 
With her smooth mechanic arts, 

Raise, when gone, the old Highland warriors, 
Bring again warm Highland hearts ? 

Nay I whate'er of good they herald, 
Whereso comes that hideous roar, 

The old charm is disenchanted, 
The old Highlands are no more I 



140 THE ENTERKIN. 

Yet, I know, there lie, all lonely, 
Still to feed thought's loftiest mood. 

Countless glens, undesecrated, 
Many an awful solitude ! 

Many a burn, in unknown corries, 
Down dark linns the white foam flings, 

Fringed with ruddy-berried rowans, 
Fed from everlasting springs. 

Still there sleep unnumbered lochans, 
Craig-begirt *mid deserts dumb, 

Where no human road yet travels. 
Never tourist's foot hath come I 

Many a Scuir, like bald sea-eagle, 
Hoary-scalped with boulder piles, 

Stands against the sunset, eying 
Ocean and the outmost Isles. 

If e'en these should fail, I '11 get me 
To some rock roared round by seas. 

There to drink calm nature's freedom. 
Till they bridge the Hebrides ! 



Shliabhair. 
{Anglice, Mountaineer.) 




HEALTH 



FIVE LAY SERMONS TO WORKING-PEOPLE. 




He is not far from every one of ns. For in Him we live and move, 
not less than in Him we have our being. 

" Out of darkness comes the hand 
Reaching through nature, — moulding man." 



Affectionately inscribed to the memory of the Rev. James Trench, 
the heart and soul of the Canongate Mission^ whoy while he preached 
a pure and a fervent gospel to its heathens^ taught them also and 
therefore to respect and save their healthy and was the Originator 
and Keeper of their Library and Penny Banky as well as their 
Minister, 




PREFACE. 




HREE of these sermons were written for, and 
(shall I say?) preached some years ago, in 
one of the earliest missionary stations in Ed- 
inburgh, established by Broughton Place Con- 
gregation, and presided over at that time by the Reverend 
James Trench ; one of the best human beings it was ever 
my privilege to know. He is dead ; dying in and of his 
work, — from typhus fever caught at the bedside of one 
of his poor members, — but he lives in the hearts of many 
a widow and fatherless child ; and lives also, I doubt not, 
in the immediate vision of Him to do whose will was his 
meat and his drink. Given ten thousand such men, how 
would the crooked places be made straight, and the rough 
places plain, the wildernesses of city wickedness, the soli- 
tary places of sin and despair, of pain and shame, be made 
glad ! This is what is to regenerate mankind ; this is the 
leaven that some day is to leaven the lump. 

The other two sermons were never preached, except in 
print ; but they were composed in the same key. I say 
this not in defence, but in explanation. I have tried to 
speak to working men and women from my lay pulpit, in 
the same words, with the same voice, with the same 
thoughts I was in the habit of using when doctoring them. 
This is the reason of their plain speaking. There is no 
7 J 



146 HEALTH. 

other way of reaching these sturdy and weather and work- 
beaten understandings ; there is nothing fine about them 
outside, though they are often as white in the skin under 
their clothes as a duchess, and their hearts as soft and 
tender as Jonathan's, or as Rachel's, or our own Grizel 
Baillie's ; but you must speak out to them, and must not 
be mealy-mouthed if you wish to reach their minds and 
affections and wills. I wish the gentlefolks could bear, 
and could use a little more of this outspokenness ; and, as 
old Porson said, condescend to call a spade a spade, and 
not a horticultural implement; five letters instead of 
twenty-two, and more to the purpose. 

You see, my dear working friends, I am great upon 
sparing your strength and taking things cannily. " All 
very well," say you; "it is easy speaking, and saying. 
Take it easy ; but if the pat 's on the fire it maun bile." 
It must, but you need n't poke up the fire forever, and 
you may now and then set the kettle on the hob, and let 
it sing, instead of leaving it to burn its bottom out. 

I had a friend who injured himself by overwork. One 
day I asked the servant if any person had called, and was 
told that some one had. " Who was it ? " " O, it 's the 
little gentleman that aye rins when he walks !^^ So I wish 
this age would walk more and " rin " less. A man can 
walk farther and longer than he can run, and it is poor 
saving to get out of breath. A man who lives to be sev- 
enty, and has ten children and (say) five-and-twenty 
grandchildren, is of more worth to the state than three 
men who die at thirty, it is to be hoped unmarried. 
However slow a coach seventy may have been, and how- 
ever energetic and go-ahead the three thirties, I back the 
tortoise against the hares in the long run. 

I am constantly seeing men who suffer, and indeed die, 



PREFACE. 147 

from living too fast ; from true though not consciously im- 
moral dissipation or scattering of their lives. Many a 
man is bankrupt in constitution at forty-five, and either 
takes out a cessio of himself to the grave, or goes on pay- 
ing ten per cent for his stock-in-trade ; he spends his cap- 
ital instead of merely spending what he makes, or better 
still, laying up a purse for the days of darkness and old 
age. A queer man, forty years ago, — Mr. Slate, or, as 
he was called, Sclate^ who was too clever and not clever 
enough, and had not wisdom to use his wit, always schem- 
ing, full of '*go," but never getting on,— was stopped by 
his friend. Sir Walter Scott, — that wonderful friend of 
us all, to whom we owe Jeanie Deans and Rob Roy, Meg 
Merrilies and Dandie Dinmont, Jinglin' Geordie, Cuddie 
Headrigg, and the immortal Bailie, — one day in Princes 
Street. " How are ye getting on, Sclate ? ** " Oo, just 
the auld thing. Sir Walter ; ma pennies cH gang on tip- 
penny eerandsr And so it is with our nervous power, 
with our vital capital, with the pence of life ; many of 
them go on " tippenny eerands." We are forever getting 
our bills renewed, till down comes the poor and damaged 
concern with dropsy or consumption, blazing fever, mad- 
ness, or palsy. There is a Western Banking system in 
living, in using our bodily organs, as well as in paper- 
money. But I am running off into another sermon. 

Health of mind and body, next to a good conscience, is 
the best blessing our Maker can give us, and to no one is 
it more immediately valuable than to the laboring man 
and his wife and children ; and indeed a good conscience 
is just moral health, the wholeness of the sense and the 
organ of duty ; for let us never forget that there is a re- 
ligion of the body, as well as, and greatly helpful of, the 
religion of the soul. We are to glorify God in our souls 



148 HEALTH. 

and in our bodies, for the best of all reasons, because they 
are His^ and to remember that at last we must give ac- 
count, not only of our thoughts and spiritual desires and 
acts, but of all the deeds done in our hody. A husband 
who, in the morning before going to his work, would cut 
his right hand off sooner than injure the wife of his bosom, 
strangles her that same night when mad with drink ; that 
is a deed done in his body, and truly by his body, for his 
judgment is gone ; and for that he must give an account 
when his name is called ; his judgment was gone ; but 
then, as the child of a drunken murderer said to me, " A' 
but, sir, wha goned it ? " I am not a teetotaller. I am 
against teetotalism as a doctrine of universal application ; 
I think we are meant to use these things as not abusing 
them, — this is one of the disciplines of life ; but I not the 
less am sure that drunkenness ruins men's bodies, — it is 
not for me to speak of souls, — is a greater cause of dis- 
ease and misery, poverty, crime, and death among the la- 
boring men and women of our towns, than consumption, 
fever, cholera, and all their tribe, with thieving and profli- 
gacy and improvidence thrown into the bargain: these 
slay their thousands ; this its tens of thousands. Do you 
ever think of the full meaning of "he's the waur o' 
drink?" How much the waur? — and then "dead drunk," 
— " mortal." Can there be anything more awfully sig- 
nificant than these expressions you hear from children in 
the streets ? 

You will see in the woodcut a good illustration of the 
circulation of the blood ; both that through our lungs, by 
which we breathe and burn, and that through the whole 
body, by which we live and build. That hand grasps the 
heart, the central depot, with its valves opening out and 



PREFACE. 149 

in, and, by its contraction and relaxation, makes the liv- 
ing fluid circulate everywhere, carrying in strength, life, 
and supply to all, and carrying off waste and harm. None 
of you will be the worse of thinking of that hand as His 
who makes, supports, moves, and governs all things, — 
that hand which, while it wheels the rolling worlds, gath- 
ers the lambs with his arm, carries them in his bosom, 
and gently leads those that are with young, and which 
was once nailed for " our advantage on the bitter cross." 



J. B. 



23 Rutland Street, 
Dec. 16, 1861. 




SERMON I. 



THE DOCTOR, — OUR DUTIES TO HIM. 




VERYBODY knows the Doctor ; a very im- 
portant person he is to us all. What could 
we do without him? He brings us into this 
world, and tries to keep us as long in it as he 
can, and as long as our bodies can hold together ; and he 
is with us at that strange and last hour which will come 
to us all, when we must leave this world and go into the 
next. 

When we are well, we perhaps think little about the 
Doctor, or we have our small joke at him and his drugs ; 
but let anything go wrong with our body, that wonderful 
tabernacle in which our soul dwells, let any of its wheels 
go wrong, then off we fly to him. If the mother thinks 
her husband or her child dying, how she runs to him, and 
urges him with her tears ! how she watches his face, and 
follows his searching eye, as he examines the dear suffer- 
er ; how she wonders what he thinks, — what would she 
give to know what he knows! how she wearies for his 
visit! how a cheerful word from him makes her heart 
leap with joy, and gives her spirit and strength to watch 
over the bed of distress! Her whole soul goes out to 
him in unspeakable gratitude when he brings back to her 
from the power of the grave her husband or darling child. 



152 HEALTH. 

The Doctor knows many of our secrets, of our sorrows, 
which no one else knows, — some of our sins, perhaps, 
which the great God alone else knows ; how many cares 
and secrets, how many lives, he carries in his heart and 
in his hands ! So you see he is a very important person 
the Doctor, and we should do our best to make the most 
of him, and to do our duty to him and to ourselves. 

A thinking man feels often painfully what a serious 
thing it is to be a doctor, to have the charge of the lives 
of his fellow-mortals, to stand, as it were, between them 
and death and eternity and the judgment-seat, and to fight 
hand to hand with Death. One of the best men and 
greatest physicians that ever lived. Dr. Sydenham, says, 
in reference to this, and it would be well if all doctors; 
young and old, would consider his words : — 

" It becomes every man who purposes to give himself 
to the care of others, seriously to consider the four follow- 
ing things: First, That he must one day give an ac- 
count to the Supreme Judge of all the lives intrusted to 
his care. Secondly, That all his skill and knowledge and 
energy, as they have been given him by God, so they 
should be exercised for His glory and the good of man- 
kind, and not for mere gain or ambition. Thirdly, and 
not more beautifully than truly. Let him reflect that he 
has undertaken the care of no mean creature, for, in order 
that we may estimate the value, the greatness of the hu- 
man race, the only begotten Son of God became himself 
a man, and thus ennobled it with His divine dignity, and, 
far more than this, died to redeem it ; and. Fourthly, That 
the Doctor, being himself a mortal man, should be dili- 
gent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inas- 
much as he himself must one day be a like snfferer." 

I shall never forget a proof I myself got twenty years 



THE DOCTOR, — OUR DUTIES TO HIM. 153 

ago, how serious a thing it is to be a doctor, and how ter- 
ribly in earnest people are when they want him. It was 
when cholera first came here in 1832. I was in England 
at Chatham, which you all know is a great place for ships 
and sailors. This fell disease comes on generally in the 
night; as the Bible says, "it walks in darkness," and 
many a morning was I roused at two o'clock to go and 
see its sudden victims, for then is its hour and power. 
One morning a sailor came to say I must go three miles 
down the river to a village where it had broken out with 
great fury. Off I set. We rowed in silence down the 
dark river, passing the huge hulks, and hearing the rest- 
less convicts turning in their beds in their chains. The 
men rowed with all their might : they had too many dy- 
ing or dead at home to have the heart to speak to me. 
We got near the place ; it was very dark, but I saw a 
crowd of men and women on the shore, at the landing- 
place. They were all shouting for the Doctor ; the shrill 
cries of the women, and the deep voices of the men com- 
ing across the water to me. We were near the shore, 
when I saw a big old man, his hat off, his hair gray, his 
head bald ; he said nothing, but turning them all off with 
his arm, he plunged into the sea, and before I knew where 
I was, he had me in his arms. I was helpless as an in- 
fant. He waded out with me, carrying me high up in 
his left arm, and with his right levelling every man or 
woman who stood in his way. 

It was Big Joe carrying me to see his grandson, little 
Joe ; and he bore me off to the poor convulsed boy, and 
dared me to leave him till he was better. He did get 
better, but Big Joe was dead that night. He had the 
disease on him when he carried me away from the boat, 
but his heart was set upon his boy. I never can forget 
7* 



154 HEALTH. 

that night, and how important a thing it was to be able to 
relieve suffering, and how much Old Joe was in earnest 
about having the Doctor. 

Now, I want you to consider how important the Doctor 
is to you. Nobody needs him so much as the poor and 
laboring man. He is often ill. He is exposed to hun- 
ger and wet and cold, and to fever, and to all the diseases 
of hard labor and poverty. His work is heavy, and his 
heart is often heavy too with misery of all kinds, — his 
back weary with its burden, — his hands and limbs often 
meeting with accidents, — and you know if the poor man, 
if one of you falls ill and takes fever, or breaks his leg, it, 
is a far more serious thing than with a richer man. Your 
health and strength are all you have to depend on ; they 
are your stock-in-trade, your capital. Therefore I shall 
ask you to remember four things about your duty to the 
Doctor, so as to get the most good out of him, and do the 
most good to him too. 

\st, It is your duty to trust the Doctor ; 

2dly^ It is your duty to obey the Doctor ; 

^dly^ It is your duty to speak the truth to the Doctor, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; and, 

Aihlyj It is your duty to reward the Doctor. 

And so now for the first. It is your duty to trust the 
Doctor, that is, to believe in him. If you were in a ship, 
in a wild storm, and among dangerous rocks, and if you 
took a pilot on board, who knew all the coast and all the 
breakers, and had a clear eye, a firm heart, and a prac- 
tised hand, would you not let him have his own way ? 
would you think of giving him your poor advice, or keep 
his hand from its work at the helm ? You would not be 
such a fool, or so uncivil, or so mad. And yet many peo- 
ple do this very same sort of thing, just because they 



THE DOCTOR, — OUR DUTIES TO HIM. 155 

don't really trust their Doctor; and a Doctor is a pilot 
for your bodies when they are in a storm and in distress. 
He takes the helm, and does his best to guide you through 
a fever ; but he must have fair play ; he must be trusted 
even in the dark. It is wonderful what cures the very 
sight of a Doctor will work, if the patient believes in him ; 
it is half the battle. His very face is as good as a medi- 
cine, and sometimes better, — and much pleasanter too. 

One day a laboring man came to me with indigestion. 
He had a sour and sore stomach, and heartburn, and the 
water-brash, and wind, and colic, and wonderful misery 
of body and mind. I found he was eating bad food, and 
too much of it; and then, when its digestion gave him 
pain, he took a glass of raw whiskey. I made him prom- 
ise to give up his bad food and his worse whiskey, and 
live on pease-brose and sweet milk, and I wrote him a 
prescription, as we call it, for some medicine, and said, 
" Take that^ and come back in a fortnight and you will 
be well." He did come back, hearty and hale ; — no 
colic, no sinking at the heart, a clean tongue, and a cool 
hand, and a firm step, and a clear eye, and a happy face. 
I was very proud of the wonders my prescription had 
done ; and having forgotten what it was, I said, '' Let me 
see what I gave you." ^*0," says he, "I took it." "Yes," 
said I, "but the prescription." ''I took it, as you bade me. 
I swallowed it." He had actually eaten the bit of paper, 
and been all that the better of it ; but it would have done 
him little, at least less good had he not trusted me when 
I said he would be better, and attended to my rules. 

So, take my word for it, and trust your Doctor ; it is 
his due, and it is for your own advantage. Now, our 
next duty is to ohe^/ the Doctor. This you will think is 
simple enough. What use is there in calling him in, if 



156 HEALTH. 

we don't do what he bids us ? and yet nothing is more 
common, partly from laziness and sheer stupidity, partly 
from conceit and suspiciousness, and partly, in the case 
of children, from false kindness and indulgence, than to 
disobey the Doctor's orders. Many a child have I seen 
die from nothing but the mother's not liking to make her 
swallow a powder, or put on a blister ; and let me say, by 
the by, teach your children at once to obey you, and take 
the medicine. Many a life is lost from this, and remem- 
ber you may make even Willie Winkie take his castor- 
oil in spite of his cries and teeth, hy holding his nose, so 
that he must swallow. 

Thirdly, You should tell the truth, the whole truth, ana 
nothing but the truth, to your Doctor. He may be never 
so clever, and never so anxious, but he can no more 
know how to treat a case of illness without knowing all 
about it, than a miller can make meal without corn ; and 
many a life have I seen lost from the patient or his 
friends concealing something that was true, or telling 
something that was false. The silliness of this is only 
equal to its sinfulness and its peril. 

I remember, in connection with that place where Big 
Joe lived and died, a singular proof of the perversity of 
people in not telling the Doctor the truth, — as you know 
people are apt to send for him in cholera when it is too 
late, when it is a death rather than a disease. But there 
is an early stage, called premonitory, — or warning, — 
when medicines can avail. I summoned all the people 
of that fishing village who were well, and told them this, 
and asked them if they had any of the symptoms. They 
all denied having any (this is a peculiar feature in that 
terrible disease, they are afraid to let on to themselves, or 
even the Doctor, that they are " in for it "), though from 



THE DOCTOR, — OUR DUTIES TO HIM. 157 

their looks and from their going away while I was speak- 
ing, I knew they were not telling the truth. Well, I 
said, ''You must, at any rate, every one of you, take 
some of this," producing a bottle of medicine. I will not 
tell you what it was, as you should never take drugs at 
your own hands, but it is simple and cheap. I made 
every one take it ; only one woman going away without 
taking any ; she was the only one of all those who died. 

Lastly J It is your duty to reward your Doctor. There 
are four ways of rewarding your Doctor. The first is by 
. giving him your money ; the second is by giving him 
your gratitude ; the third is by your doing his bidding ; 
and the fourth is by speaking well of him, giving him a 
good name, recommending him to others. Now, I know 
few if any of you can pay your Doctor, and it is a great 
public blessing that in this country you wall always get a 
good Doctor willing to attend you for nothing, and this is 
a great blessing ; but let me tell you, — I don't think I 
need tell you, — try and pay him, be it ever so little. It 
does you good as well as him ; it keeps up your self- 
respect ; it raises you in your own eye, in your neigh- 
bor's, and, what is best, in your God's eye, because it is 
doing what is right. The " man of independent mind," 
be he never so poor, is " king of men for a' that " ; ay, 
and " for twice and mair than a' that " ; and to pay his 
way is one of the proudest things a poor man can say, 
and he may say it oftener than he thinks he can. And 
then let me tell you, as a bit of cool, worldly wisdom, that 
your Doctor will do you all the more good, and make a 
better job of your cure, if he gets something, some money 
for his pains ; it is human nature and common sense, 
this. It is wonderful how much real kindness and 
watching and attendance and cleanliness you may get 



158 HEALTH. 

for so many shillings a week. Nursing is a much bettei 
article at that, — much, — than at nothing a week. But 
I pass on to the other ways of paying or rewarding your 
Doctor, and, above all, to gratitude. 

Honey is not sweeter in your mouths, and light is not 
more pleasant to your eyes, and music to your ears, and 
a warm, cosey bed is not more welcome to your wearied 
legs and head, than is the honest, deep gratitude of the 
poor to the young Doctor. It is his glory, his reward ; 
he fills himself with it, and wraps himself all round with 
it as with a cloak, and goes on in his work, happy and 
hearty ; and the gratitude of the poor is worth the hav- 
ing, and worth the keeping, and worth the remembering. 
Twenty years ago I attended old Sandie Campbell's wife 
in a fever, in Big Hamilton's Close in the Grassmarket, 
— two worthy, kindly souls they were and are. (Sandie 
is dead now.) By God's blessing, the means I used 
saved " oor Kirsty's " life, and I made friends of these 
two forever ; Sandie would have fought for me if need 
be, and Kirsty would do as good. I can count on them 
as my friends, and when I pass the close-mouth in the 
West Port, where they now live, and are thriving, keeping 
their pigs, and their hoary old cuddie and cart, I get a 
courtesy from Kirsty, and see her look after me, and turn 
to the women beside her, and I know exactly what she is 
saying to them about " Dr. Broon." And when I meet 
old Sandie, with his ancient and long-lugged friend, driv- 
ing the draff from the distillery for his swine, I see his 
gray eye brighten and glisten, and he looks up and 
gives his manly and cordial nod, and goes on his way, 
and I know that he is saying to himself, " God bless him ! 
he saved my Kirsty's life," and he runs back in his mind 
all those twenty past years, and lays out his heart on all 



THE DOCTOR, — OUR DUTIES TO HIM. 159 

he remembers, and that does him good and me too, and 
nobody any ilh Therefore, give your gratitude to your 
Doctor, and remember him, like honest Sandie ; it will 
not lose its reward and it costs you nothing ; it is one of 
those things you can give and never be a bit the poorer, 
but all the richer. 

One person I would earnestly warn you against, and 
that is the Quack Doctor, If the real Doctor is a sort of 
God of healing, or rathei; our God's cobbler for the body, 
the Quack is the Devil for the body, or rather the Devil's 
servant against the body. And like his father, he is a 
great liar and cheat. He offers you w^hat he cannot give. 
Whenever you see a medicine that cures everything, be 
sure it cures nothing ; and remember, it may kill. The 
Devil promised our Saviour all the kingdoms of the world 
if he would fall down and worship him ; now this was a 
lie, he could not give him any such thing. Neither can 
the Quack give you his kingdoms of health, even though 
you worship him as he best likes, by paying him for his 
trash ; he is dangerous and dear, and often deadly, — 
have nothing to do with him. 

We have our duties to one another, yours to me, and 
mine to you : but we have all our duty to one else, — to 
Almighty God, who is beside us at this very moment — 
who followed us all this day, and knew all we did and 
did n't do, what we thought and did n't think, — who 
will watch over us all this night, — who is continually 
doing us good, — who is waiting to be gracious to us, — 
who is the great Physician, whose saving health will heal 
all our diseases, and redeem our life from destruction, 
and crown us with loving-kindness and tender mercies, — 
who can make death the opening into a better life, the 
very gate of heaven ; that same death which is to all of 



160 HEALTH. 

US the most awful and most certain of all things, and at 
whose door sits its dreadful king, with that javelin, that 
sting of his, which is sin, our own sin. Death would be 
nothing without sin, no more than falling asleep in the 
dark to awake to the happy light of the morning. Now, 
I would have you think of your duty to this great God, 
our Father in heaven ; and I would have you to remem- 
ber that it is your duty to trust Him, to believe in Him. 
If you do not, your soul will be shipwrecked, you will go 
down in terror and in darkness. 

It is your duty to ohey Him. Whom else in all this 
world should you obey, if not Him? and who else so 
easily pleased, if we only do obey ? It is your duty to 
speak the truth to Him, not that he needs any man to tell 
Him anything. He knows everything about everybody ; 
nobody can keep a secret from Him. But he hates lies ; 
He abhors a falsehood. He is the God of truth, and 
must be dealt honestly with, in sincerity and godly fear ; 
and, lastly, you must in a certain sense reward Him. 
You cannot give Him money, for the silver and gold, the 
cattle upon a thousand hills, are all His already, but you 
can give Him your grateful lives ; you can give Him 
your hearts; and as old Mr. Henry says, "Thanksgiv- 
ing is good, but thanks-living is better." 

One word more ; you should call your Doctor early. 
It saves time; it saves suffering; it saves trouble; it 
saves life. If you saw a fire beginning in your house, 
you would put it out as fast as you could. You might 
perhaps be able to blow out with your breath what in an 
hour the fire-engiiie could make nothing of. So it is 
with disease and the Doctor. A disease in the morning 
when beginning is like the fire beginning ; a dose of 
medicine, some simple thing, may put it out, when if left 



THE DOCTOR, — HIS DUTIES TO YOU. 161 

alone, before night it may be raging hopelessly, like the 
fire if left alone, and leaving your body dead and in ruins 
in a few hours. So, call in the Doctor soon ; it saves 
him much trouble, and may save you your life. 

And let me end by asking you to call in the Great 
Physician ; to call Him instantly, to call Him in time ; 
there is not a moment to lose. He is waiting to be 
called ; He is standing at the door. But He must be 
called, — He may be called too late. 



SERMON II. 

THE DOCTOR, — HIS DUTIES TO YOU. 

YOU remember our last sermon was mostly about 
your duties to the Doctor. I am now going to 
speak about his duties to you ; for you know it is a law 
of our life, that there are no one-sided duties, — they are 
all double. It is like shaking hands, there must be two 
at it ; and both of you ought to give a hearty grip and a 
hearty shake. You owe much to many, and many owe 
much to you. The Apostle says, *'Owe no man any- 
thing but to love one another " ; but if you owe that, you 
must be forever paying it ; it is always due, always run- 
ning on ; and the meanest and most helpless, the most 
forlorn, can always pay and be paid in that coin, and in 
paying can buy more than he thought of. Just as a 
farthing candle, twinkling out of a cottar's window, and, 
it may be, guiding the gudeman home to his wife and 
children, sends its rays out into the infinite expanse 



162 HEALTH. 

of heaven, and thus returns, as it were, the light of the 

stars, which are many of them suns. You cannot pass 

any one on the street to whom you are not bound 

by this law. If he falls down, you help to raise him. 

You do your best to relieve him, and get him home ; and 

let me tell you, to your great gain and honor, the poor 

are far more ready and better at this sort of work than 

the gentlemen and ladies. You do far more for each 

other than they do. You will share your last loaf ; you 

■will sit up night after night with a neighbor you know 

nothing about, just because he is your neighbor, and yoi; 

know what it is to be neighbor-like. You are more 

natural and less selfish than the fine folks. I don't say 

you are better, neither do I say you are worse ; that 

would be a foolish and often mischievous way of speaking. 

We have all virtues and vices and advantages peculiar to 

our condition. You know the queer old couplet, — 

** Them what is rich, them rides in chaises ; 
Them what is poor, them walks like blazes." 

If you were well, and not in a hurry, and it were cold, 
would you not much rather " walk like blazes," than ride 
listless in your chaise? But this I know, for I have 
seen it, that according to their means, the poor bear one 
another's burdens far more than the rich. 

There are many reasons for this, outside of yourselves, 
and there is no need of your being proud of it or indeed 
of anything else ; but it is something to be thankful for, 
in the midst of all your hardships, that you in this have 
more of the power and of the luxury of doing immediate, 
visible good. You pay this debt in ready-money, as you 
do your meal and your milk ; at least you have very 
short credit, and the shorter the better. Now, the Doc- 
tor has his duties to you, and it is well that he should 



THE DOCTOR, — HIS DUTIES TO YOU. 163 

know them, and that jou should know them too ; for it 
will be long before you and he can do without each 
other. You keep each other alive. Disease, accidents, 
pain, and death reign everywhere, and we call one 
another mortals, as if our chief peculiarity was that we 
must die, and you all know how death came into this 
world. "By one man sin entered in the world, and 
death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for 
that all have sinned" ; and disease, disorder, and distress 
are the fruits of sin, as truly as that apple grew on 
that forbidden tree. You have now-a-days all sorts 
of schemes for making bad men good, and good men bet- 
ter. The world is full of such schemes, some of them 
wise and some foolish ; but to be wise they must all go on 
the principle of lessening misery by lessening sin ; so that 
the old weaver at Kilmarnock, who at a meeting for 
abolishing slavery, the corn laws, and a few more things, 
said, " Mr. Preses, I move that we abolish Original Sin," 
was at least beginning at the right end. Only fancy 
what a world it would be, what a family any of ours 
would be, when everybody did everything that was right, 
and nothing that was wrong, say for a week ! The world 
would not know itself. It would be inclined to say with 
the " wee bit wifiekie," though reversing the cause, 
" This is no me." I am not going to say more on this 
point. It is not my parish. But you need none of you 
be long ignorant of Who it is who has abolished death, 
and therefore vanquished sin. 

Well, then, it is the duty of the Doctor in the first 
place, to cure us ; in the second, to be Jdnd to us ; in the 
third, to be true to us ; in the fourth, to keep our secrets ; 
in the fifth, to warn us, and, best of all, to forewarn us ; 
in the sixth, to he grateful to us ; and, in the last, to keep 
his time and his temper. 



164 HEALTH. 

And, Jirst^ it is the duty of the Doctor to cure you — 
if he can. That is what we call him in for ; and a doc- 
tor, be he never so clever and delightful, who does n't 
cure, is like a mole-catcher who can't catch moles, or a 
watchmaker who can do everything but make your watch 
go. Old Dr. Pringle of Perth, when preaching in the 
country, found his shoes needed mending, and he asked 
the brother whom he was assisting to tell him of a good 
cobbler, or as he called him, a snob. His friend men- 
tioned a " Tammas Eattray, a godly man, and an elder." 
" But," said Dr. Pringle, in his snell way, " can he mend 
my shoon ? that 's what I want ; I want a shoemaker ; 
I'm not wanting an elder." It turned out that Tam- 
mas was a better elder than a shoemaker. A doctor was 
once attending a poor woman in labor ; it was a desperate 
case, requiring a cool head and a firm will; the good 
man — for he was good — had neither of these, and 
losing his presence of mind, gave up the poor woman 
as lost, and retired into the next room to pray for her. 
Another doctor, who perhaps wanted what the first one 
had, and certainly had what he wanted, brains and cour- 
age, meanwhile arrived, and called out, — " Where is Dr. 

? " " O, he has gone into the next room to pray ! " 

" Pray ! tell him to come here this moment, and help 
me ; he can work and pray too " ; and with his assistance 
the snell doctor saved that woman's life. This, then, is 
the Doctor's first duty to you, — to cure you, — and for 
this he must, in the first place, be up to his business ; he 
must know what to do, and, secondly, he must be able to 
do it ; he must not merely do as a pointer dog does, 
stand and say " there it is," and no more, he must point 
and shoot too. And let me tell you, moreover, that un- 
less a man likes what he is at, and is in earnest, and 



THE DOCTOR, — HIS DUTIES TO YOU. 165 

Sticks to it, he will no more make a good doctor than a 
good anything else. Doctoring is not only a way for a 
man to do good by curing disease, and to get money to 
himself for doing this, but it is also a study which inter- 
ests for itself alone, like geology, or any other science ; 
and moreover it is a way to fame and the glory of the 
world ; all these four things act upon the mind of the 
Doctor, but unless the first one is uppermost, his patient 
will come off second-best with him ; he is not the man for 
your lives or for your money. 

They tell a story, which may not be word for word 
true, but it has truth and a great principle in it, as all 
good stories have. It is told of one of our clever friends, 
the French, who are so knowing in everything. A great 
French doctor was taking an English one round the 
wards of his hospital ; all sort of miseries going on before 
them, some dying, others longing for death, all ill ; the 
Frenchman was wonderfully eloquent about all their 
diseases, you would have thought he saw through them, 
and knew all their secret wheels like looking into a 
watch or into a glass beehive. He told his English 
friend what would be seen in such a case, when the body 
was opened! He spent some time in this sort of work, 
and was coming out, full of glee, when the other doctor 

said : " But, Dr. , you have n't prescribed for these 

cases." " O, neither I have ! " said he, with a grumph 
and a shrug ; " I quite forgot that " ; that being the one 
thing why these poor people were there, and why he was 
there too. Another story of a Frenchman, though I dare 
say we could tell it of ourselves. He was a great profes- 
sor, and gave a powerful poison as a medicine for an ugly 
disease of the skin. He carried it very far, so as to 
weaken the poor fellow, who died, just as the last vestige 



166 HEALTH. 

of the skin disease died too. On looking at the dead 
body, quite smooth and white, and, also, quite dead, he 
said, " Ah, never mind, he was dead curedr 

So let me advise you, as, indeed, your good sense will 
advise yourselves, to test a Doctor by this : — Is he in 
earnest ? does he speak little and do much ? does he 
make your case his first care ? He may, after that, 
speak of the weather, or the money-market; he may 
gossip, and even haver ; or he may drop, quietly and 
shortly, some " good words," — the fewer the better ; 
something that causes you to think and feel; and may 
teach you to be more of the Publican than of the Phari- 
see, in that story you know of, when they two went up 
to the temple to pray ; but generally speaking, the Doc- 
tor should, like the rest of us, stick to his trade, and mind 
his business. 

Secondly^ It is the Doctor's duty to be kind to you. 
I mean by this, not only to speak kindly, but to le kind, 
which includes this and a great deal more, though a kind 
word, as well as a merry heart, does good, like a medi- 
cine. Cheerfulness, or rather cheeriness, is a great thing 
in a Doctor; his very foot should have "music in't, 
when he comes up the stair." The Doctor should never 
lose his power of pitying pain, and letting his patient see 
this and feel it. Some men, and they are often the best 
at their proper work, can let their hearts come out only 
through their eyes ; but it is not the less sincere, and to 
the point; you can make your mouth ?ay what is not 
true ; you can't do quite so much with your eyes. A 
Doctor's eye should command, as well as comfort and 
cheer his patient ; he should never let him think disobe- 
dience or despair possible. Perhaps you think Doctors 
get hardened by seeing so much suffering; this is not 



THE DOCTOR, — HIS DUTIES TO YOU. 167 

true. Pity as a motive, as well as a feeling ending in 
itself, is stronger in an old Doctor than in a young, so he 
be made of the right stuff. He comes to know himself 
what pain and sorrow mean, what their weight is, and 
how grateful he was or is for relief and sympathy. 

Thirdly, It is his duty to be true to you. True in 
word and in deed. He ought to speak nothing but the 
truth, as to the nature, and extent, and issues of the 
disease he is treating ; but he is not bound, as I said you 
were, to tell the whole truth, — that is for his own wisdom 
and discretion to judge of; only, never let him tell an 
untruth, and let him be honest enough, when he can't 
say anything definite, to say nothing. It requires some 
courage to confess our ignorance, but it is worth it. As 
to the question, often spoken of, — telhng a man he is 
dying, — the Doctor must, in the first place, be sure the 
patient is dying; and, secondly, that it is for his good, 
bodily and mental, to tell him so: he should almost 
always warn the friends, but, even here, cautiously. 

Fourthly, It is his duty to keep your secrets. There 
are things a Doctor comes to know and is told which no 
one but he and the Judge of all should know ; and he is 
a base man, and unworthy to be in such a noble profes- 
sion as that of healing, who can betray what he knows 
must injure, and in some cases may ruin. 

Fifthly, It is his duty to warn you against what is 
injuring your health. If he finds his patient has brought 
disease upon himself by sin, by drink, by over-work, by 
over-eating, by over-anything, it is his duty to say so 
plainly and firmly, and the same with regard to the treat- 
ment of children by their parents ; the family doctor 
should forewarn them ; he should explain, as far as he is 
able and they can comprehend them, the Laws of Health, 



168 HEALTH. 

and so tell them how to prevent disease, as well as do his 
best to cure it. What a great and rich field there is here 
for our profession, if they and the public could only work 
well together ! In this, those queer, half-daft, half- wise 
beings, the Chinese, take a wiser way; they pay their 
Doctor for keeping them well, and they stop his pay as 
long as they are ill ! 

Sixthly^ It is his duty to be grateful to you; 1st, for 
employing him, whether you pay him in money or not, 
for a Doctor, worth being one, makes capital, makes 
knowledge, and therefore power out of every case he 
has; 2dly, for obeying him and getting better. I am 
always very much obliged to my patients for being so 
kind as to be better, and for saying so; for many are 
ready enough to say they are worse, not so many to say 
they are better, even when they are ; and you know our 
Scotch way of saying, " I 'm no that ill," when " I " is in , 
high health, or, '' I 'm no ony waur," when " I " is much 
better. Don't be niggards in this; it cheers the Doc- 
tor's heart, and it will lighten yours. 

Seventhly^ and lastly, It is the Doctor's duty to keep his 
time and his temper with you. Any man or woman who 
knows how longed for a doctor's visit is, and counts on it 
to a minute, knows how wrong, how painful, how anger- 
ing it is for the Doctor not to keep his time. Many 
things may occur, for his urgent cases are often sudden, 
to put him out of his reckoning; but it is wonderful 
what method, and real consideration, and a strong will 
can do in this way. I never found Dr. Abercrombie a 
minute after or hefore his time (both are bad, though one 
is the worser) , and yet if I wanted him in a hurry, and 
stopped his carriage in the street, he could always go with 
me at once ; he had the knack and the principle of being 



THE DOCTOK, — HIS DUTIES TO YOU. 160 

true in his times, for it is often a matter of truth. And 
the Doctor must keep his temper : this is often worse 
to manage than even his time, there is so much un- 
reason, and ingratitude, and peevishness, and imperti- 
nence, and impatience, that it is very hard to keep one's 
tongue and eye from being angry : and sometimes the 
Doctor does not only well, but the best, when he is down- 
rightly angry, and astonishes some fool, or some insolent, 
or some untruth-doing or saying patient ; but the Doctor 
should be patient w^ith his patients, he should bear with 
them, knowing how much they are at the moment suffer- 
ing. Let us remember Him who is full of compassion, 
whose compassion never fails ; whose tender mercies are 
new to us every morning, as His faithfulness is every 
night ; who healed all manner of diseases, and was kind 
to the unthankful and the evil ; what would become of 
us, if He were as impatient with us as we often are with 
each other? If you want to be impressed with the Al- 
mighty's infinite loving-kindness and tender mercy, His 
forbearance. His long-suffering patience. His slowness to 
anger. His Divine ingeniousness in trying to find it possi- 
ble to spare and save, think of the Israelites in the desert, 
and read the chapter where Abraham intercedes with 
God for Sodom, and these w^onderful " peradventures." 

But I am getting tedious, and keeping you and myself 
too long, so good night. Let the Doctor and you be 
honest and grateful, and kind and cordial, in one word, 
dutiful to each other, and you will each be the better of 
the other. 

I may by and by say a word or two to you on your 
Health, which is your wealth, that by which you are 
and do well, and on your Children, and how to guide it 
and them. 

8 



170 HEALTH. 

SERMON III. 

CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM. 

OUR text at this time is Children and their treat- 
ment, or as it sounds better to our ears, Bairns, 
and how to guide them. You all know the wonder and 
astonishment there is in a house among its small people 
when a baby is born ; how they stare at the new arrival 
with its red face. Where does it come from ? Some tell 
them it comes from the garden, from a certain kind of cab- 
bage ; some from " Rob Rorison's bonnet," of which wha 
liasna heard ? some from that famous wig of Charlie's, in 
which the cat kittled, when there was three o' them leevin', 
and three o' them dead ; and you know the Doctor is often 
said to bring the new baby in his pocket ; and many a 
time have my pockets been slyly examined by the curious 
youngsters, — especially the girls ! — in hopes of finding 
another baby. But I '11 tell you where all the babies 
come from ; they all come from God; His hand made 
and fashioned them ; He breathed into their nostrils the 
breath of life, — of His life. He said, " Let this little 
child be," and it was. A child is a true creation; its 
soul, certainly, and in a true sense, its body too. And as 
our children came from Him, so they are going back to 
Him, and He lends them to us as keepsakes ; we are to 
keep and care for them for His sake. What a strange 
and sacred thought this is ! Children are God's gifts to 
us, and it depends on our guiding of them, not only 
whether they are happy here, but whether they are 
happy hereafter in that great unchangeable eternity, into 



CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM. 171 

which you and I, and all of us are fast going. I once 
asked a little girl, " Who made you ? " and she said, 
holding up her apron as a measure, " God make me that 
length, and I growed the rest myself." Now this, as you 
know, was not quite true, for she could not grow one half- 
inch by herself. God makes us grow as well as makes us 
at first. But what I want you to fix in your minds is, 
that children come from God, and are returning to Him, 
and that you and I, who are parents, have to answer to 
Him for the way we behave to our dear children, — the 
kind of care we take of them. 

Now, a child consists, like ourselves, of a body and a 
soul. I am not going to say much about the guiding of 
the souls of children, — that is a little out of my line, — 
but I may tell you that the soul, especially in children, 
depends much, for its good and for its evil, for its happi- 
ness or its misery, upon the kind of body it lives in ; for 
the body is just the house that the soul dwells in ; and 
you know that, if a house be uncomfortable, the tenant 
of it will be uncomfortable and out of sorts ; if its win- 
dows let the rain and wind in, if the chimney smoke, if 
the house be damp, and if there be a want of good 
air, then the people who live in it will be miserable 
enough ; and if they have no coals, and no water, and 
no meat, and no beds, then you may be sure it will 
soon be left by its inhabitants. And so, if you don't 
do all you can to make your children's bodies healthy 
and happy, their souls will get miserable and cankered 
and useless, their tempers peevish ; and if you don't feed 
and clothe them right, then their poor little souls will 
leave their ill-used bodies, — will be starved out of them ; 
and many a man and woman have had their tempers, 
and their minds and hearts, made miseries to themselves, 



172 HEALTH. 

and all about them, just from a want of care of their 
bodies when children. 

There is something very sad, and, in a true sense, very- 
unnatural, in an unhappy child. You and I, grown-up 
people, who have cares, and have had sorrows and diffi- 
culties and sins, may well be dull and sad sometimes ; it 
would be still sadder, if we were not often so ; but chil- 
dren should be always either laughing and playing, or 
eating and sleeping. Play is their business. You can- 
not think how much useful knowledge, and -how much 
valuable bodily exercise, a child teaches itself in its play ; 
and look how merry the young of other animals are : the 
kitten making fun of everything, even of its sedate 
mother's tail and whiskers ; the lambs, running races in 
their mirth ; even the young asses, — the baby-cuddie, — 
how pawky and droll and happy he looks with his fuzzy 
head, and his laughing eyes, and his long legs, stot, 
stotting after that venerable and sair hauden-doun lady, 
with the long ears, his mother. One thing I like to see, 
is a child clean in the morning. I like to see its plump 
little body, well washed, and sweet and caller from top to 
bottom. But there is another thing I like to see, and that 
is a child dirty at night. I like a steerirC hairn^ — goo- 
gooin', crowing and kicking, keeping everybody alive. 
Do you remember William Miller's song of " Wee Willie 
Winkie ? " Here it is. I think you will allow, especially 
you who are mothers, that it is capital. 

" Wee Willie Winkie 

Rins through the toun, 
Up stairs an' doon stairs 

In his nicht-goun, 
Tirlin' at the win-dow, 

Crying at the lock, 
* Are the weans in their bed, 

For it 's noo ten o'clock ? ' 



CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM. 173 

" * Hey, Willie Winkie, 

Are ye comin' ben ! 
The cat 's singin' gray thrums 

To the sleepin' hen, 
The dog 's speldert on the floor. 

And disna gi'e a cheep, 
But here 's a waukrife laddie ! 

That winna fa' asleep.* 

*' ' Onything but sleep, you rogue ! 

Glow'rin' like the moon! 
Rattlin' in an aim jug 

Wi' an aim spoon, 
Rumblin', tumblin' roun* about, 

Crawin' like a cock, 
Skirlin' like a kenna-what, 

Wauk'nin' sleepin' folk. 

" * Hey, Willie Winkie, 

The wean 's in a creel ! 
Wamblin' aff a bodie's knee 

Like a verra eel, 
Ruggin' at the cat's lug. 

And ravelin' a' her thrums, — 
Hey, Willie Winkie, — 

See, there he comes ! ' 

" Wearied is the mither 

That has a stoorie wean, 
A wee stumpie stousie, 

Wha canna rin his lane, 
That has a battle aye wi' sleep 

Afore he '11 close an e'e, — 
But ae kiss frae afif his rosy lips 

Gi'es strength anew to me." 

Is not this good ? first-rate ! The cat singin' gray 
thrums, and the wee stumpie stousie, ruggin' at her lug, 
and ravelin' a' her thrums ; and then what a din he is 
making! — rattlin' in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon, skir- 
lin' like a kenna-what, and ha'in' a battle aye wi' sleep 
What a picture of a healthy and happy child ! 

Now, I know how hard it is for many of you to get 



174 HEALTH. 

meat for your children, and clothes for them, and bed and 
bedding for them at night, and I know how you have to 
struggle for yourselves and them, and how difficult it 
often is for you to take all the care you would like to do 
of them, and you will believe me when I say, that it is a 
far greater thing, because a far harder thing, for a poor, 
struggling, and it may be weakly woman in your sta- 
tion, to bring up her children comfortably, than for those 
who are richer ; but still you may do a great deal of good 
at little cost either of money or time or trouble. And 
it is well-wared pains ; it will bring you in two hun- 
dred per cent in real comfort, and profit, and credit ; and 
so you will I am sure listen good-naturedly to me, when 
I go over some plain and simple things about the health 
of your children. 

To begin with their heads. You know the head con- 
tains the brain, which is the king of the body, and com- 
mands all under him ; and it depends on his being good 
or bad whether his subjects, — the legs, and arms, and 
body, and stomach, and our old friends the bowels, are in 
good order and happy, or not. Now, first of all, keep the 
head cool. Nature has given it a night-cap of her own 
in the hair, and it is the best. And keep the head clean. 
Give it a good scouring every Saturday night at the 
least; and if it get sore and scabbit, the best thing I 
know for it is to wash it with soft soap (black soap), and 
put a big cabbage-blade on it every night. Then for the 
lungs, or lichts, — the bellows that keep the fire of life 
burning, — they are very busy in children, because a 
child is not like grown-up folk, merely keeping itself up. 
It is doing this, and growing too ; and so it eats more, and 
sleeps more, and breathes more in proportion than big folk. 
And to carry on all this business it must have fresh air, 



CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM. 175 

and lots of it. So, whenever it can be managed, a child 
should have a good while every day in the open air, and 
should have well-aired places to sleep in. Then for their 
nicht-gowns, the best are long flannel gowns ; and chil- 
dren should be always more warmly clad than grown-up 
people, — cold kills them more easily. Then there is the 
stomachy and as this is the kitchen and great manufactory, 
it is almost always the first thing that goes wrong in chil- 
dren, and generally as much from too much being put 
in, as from its food being of an injurious kind. A baby 
for nine months after it is born, should have almost noth- 
ing but its mother's milk. This is God's food, and it is 
the best and the cheapest too. If the baby be healthy it 
should be w^eaned or spained at nine or ten months ; and 
this should be done gradually, giving the baby a little 
gruel, or new milk, and water and sugar, or thin bread- 
berry, once a day for some time, so as gradually to wean 
it. This makes it easier for mother as well as baby. No 
child should get meat or hard things till it gets teeth to 
chew them, and no baby should ever get a drop of 
whiskey, or any strong drink, unless by the Doctor's orders. 
Whiskey to the soft, tender stomach of an infant is like 
vitriol to ours ; it is a burning poison to its dear little 
body, as it may be a burning poison and a curse to its 
never-dying soul. As you value your children's health 
of body, and the salvation of their souls, never give them 
a drop of whiskey ; and let mothers, above all others, 
beware of drinking when nursing. The whiskey passes 
from their stomachs into their milk, and poisons their 
own child. This is a positive fact. And think of 
a drunk woman carrying and managing a child ! I was 
once, many years ago, walking in Lothian Street, when I 
saw a woman staggering along very drunk. She was 



176 HEALTH. 

carrying a child ; it was lying over her shoulder. I saw 
it slip, slippin' farther and farther back. I ran, and cried 
out ; but before I could get up, the poor little thing smil- 
ing over its miserable mother's shoulder, fell down, like a 
stone, on its head, on the pavement ; it gave a gasp, and 
turned up its blue eyes, and had a convulsion, and its soul 
was away to God, and its little, soft, waefu' body lying 
dead, and its idiotic mother grinning and staggering over 
it, half seeing the dreadful truth, then forgetting it, and 
cursing and swearing. That was a sight ! so much 
misery, and wickedness, and ruin. It was the young 
woman's only child. When she came to herself, she 
became mad, and is to this day a drivelling idiot, and 
goes about forever seeking for her child, and cursing 
the woman who killed it. This is a true tale, too true. 

There is another practice which I must notice, and 
that is giving children laudanum to make them sleep, 
and keep them quiet, and for coughs and windy pains. 
Now, this is a most dangerous thing. I have often been 
called in to see children who were dying, and who did 
die, from laudanum given in this way. I have known 
four drops kill a child a month old ; and ten drops one a 
year old. The best rule, and one you should stick to, as 
under God's eye as well as the law's, is, never to give 
laudanum without a Doctor's line or order. And when 
on this subject, I would also say a word about the use of 
opium and laudanum among yourselves. I know this is 
far commoner among the poor in Edinburgh than is 
thought. But I assure you, from much experience, that 
the drunkenness and stupefaction from the use of lauda- 
num is even worse than that from whiskey. The one 
poisons and makes mad the body ; the other, the lauda- 
num, poisons the mind, and makes it like an idiot's. So, 



CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM. 177 

in both matters beware ; death is in the cup, murder is in 
the cup, and poverty and the workhouse, and the gal- 
lows, and an awful future of pain and misery, — all are in 
the cup. These are the wages the Devil pays his ser- 
vants with for doing his work. 

But to go back to the bairns. And first a word on our 
old friends, the bowels. Let them alone as much as you 
can. They will put themselves and keep themselves 
right, if you take care to prevent wrong things going into 
the stomach ! No sour apples, or raw turnips or carrots ; 
no sweeties or tarts, and all that kind of abomination ; no 
tea, to draw the sides of their tender little stomachs 
together ; no whiskey, to kill their digestion ; no Gundy y 
or Taffy ^ or Lick^ or Black Main^ or Jib ; the less sugar 
and sweet things the better ; the more milk and butter 
and fat the better ; but plenty of plain, halesome food, 
parritch and milk, bread and butter, potatoes and milk, 
good broth, — kail as we call it. You often hear of 
the wonders of cod-liver oil, and they are wonders ; 
poor little wretches who have faces like old puggies', 
and are all belly and no legs, and are screaming 
all day and all night too, — these poor little wretches 
under the cod-liver oil, get sonsy, and rosy, and fat, 
and happy, and strong. Now, this is greatly because 
the cod-liver oil is capital food. If you can't afford to 
get cod-liver oil for delicate children, or if they reject it, 
give them plain olive oil, a tablespoonful twice a day, 
and take one to yourself, and you will be astonished how 
you will, both of you, thrive. 

Some folk will tell you that children's feet should be 

always kept warm. I say no. No healthy child's feet 

are warm ; but the great thing is to keep the body warm. 

That is like keeping the fire good, and the room will be 

8* L 



178 HEALTH. 

warm. The chest, the breast, is the plactJ where the fire 
of the body, — the heating apparatus, — is, and if you 
keep it warm, and give it plenty of fuel, which is fresh 
air and good food, you need not mind about the feetikins, 
they will mind themselves ; indeed, for my own part, I 
am so ungenteel as to think bare feet and bare legs in 
summer the most comfortable wear, costing much less 
than leather and worsted, the only kind of soles that are 
always fresh. As to the moral training of children, I 
need scarcely speak to you. What people want about 
these things is, not knowledge, but the will to do what is 
right, — what they know to be right, and the moral 
power to do it. 

Whatever you wish your child to be, be it yourself. 
If you wish it to be happy, healthy, sober, truthful, affec- 
tionate, honest, and godly, be yourself all these. If you 
wish it to be lazy and sulky, and a liar, and a thief, and 
a drunkard, and a swearer, be yourself all these. As 
the old cock crows, the young cock learns. You will re- 
member who said, " Train up a child in the way he 
should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." 
And you may, as a general rule, as soon expect to gather 
grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles, as get good, 
healthy, happy children from diseased and lazy and 
wicked parents. 

Let me put you in mind, seriously, of one thing that 
you ought to get done to all your children, and that is, to 
have them vaQcinated, or inoculated with the cow-pock. 
The best time for this is two months after birth, but bet- 
ter late than never, and in these times you need never 
have any excuse for its not being done. You have only 
to take your children to the Old or the New Town Dis- 



CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM. 179 

pensaries. It is a real crime, I think, in parents to neg- 
lect this. It is cruel to their child, and it is a crime to 
the public. If every child in the world were vaccinated, 
which might be managed in a few years, that loathsome 
and deadly disease, the small-pox, would disappear from 
the face of the earth ; but many people are so stupid, and 
so lazy, and so prejudiced, as to neglect this plain duty, 
till they find to their cost that it is too late. So promise 
me, all seriously in your hearts, to see to this if it is 
not done already, and see to it immediately. 

Be always frank and open with your children. Make 
them trust you and tell you all their secrets. Make them 
feel at ease with you, and make free with them. There 
is no such good plaything for grown-up children like you 
and me as weans, wee ones. It is wonderful what you 
can get them to do with a little coaxing and fun. You 
all know this as well as I do, and you all practise it 
every day in your own families. Here is a pleasant little 
story out of an old book. " A gentleman having led a 
company of children beyond their usual journey, they 
began to get weary, and all cried to him to carry them on 
his back, but because of their multitude he could not do 
this. ' But,' says he, ' I '11 get horses for us all ' ; then 
cutting little wands out of the hedge as ponies for them, 
and a great stake as a charger for himself, this put mettle 
in their little legs, and they rode cheerily home." So 
much for a bit of ingenious fun. 

One thing, however poor you are, you can give your 
children, and that is your prayers, and they are, if real 
and humble, worth more than silver or gold, — more 
than food and clothing, and have often brought from our 
Father who is in heaven, and hears our prayers, both 
money and meat and clothes, and all worldly good things. 



180 HEALTH. 

And there is one thing you can always teach your child: 
you may not yourself know how to read or write, and there- 
fore you may not be able to teach your children how to 
do these things ; you may not know the names of the 
stars or their geography, and may therefore not be able 
to tell them how far you are from the sun, or how big the 
moon is ; nor be able to tell them the way to Jerusalem 
or Australia, but you may always be able to tell them 
who made the stars and numbered them, and you may tell 
them the road to heaven. You may always teach them 
to pray. Some weeks ago, I was taken out to see the 
mother of a little child. She was very dangerously ill, 
and the nurse had left the child to come and help me. 
I went up to the nursery to get some hot water, and in 
the child's bed I saw something raised up. This was 
the little fellow under the bedclothes kneeling. I said, 
" What are you doing ? " "I am praying God to make 
mamma better," said he. God likes these little prayers 
and these little people, — for of such is the kingdom of 
heaven. These are His little ones, His lambs, and He 
hears their cry ; and it is enough if they only lisp their 
prayers. "Abba, Father," is all He needs; and our 
prayers are never so truly prayers as when they are 
most like children's in simplicity, in directness, in perfect 
fulness of reliance. "They pray right up," as black 
Uncle Tom says in that wonderful book, which I hope 
you have all read and wept over. 

I forgot to speak about punishing children. I am old- 
fashioned enough to uphold the ancient practice of warm- 
ing the young bottoms with some sharpness, if need be ; 
it is a wholesome and capital application, and does good 
to the bodies, and the souls too, of the little rebels, and it 
is far less cruel than being sulky, as some parents are, 



HEALTH. 181 

and keeping up a grudge at their children. Warm the bott, 
say I, and you will warm the heart too ; and all goes right. 
And now I must end. I have many things I could say 
to you, but you have had enough of me and my bairns, I 
am sure. Go home, and when you see the little curly pows 
on their pillows, sound asleep, pour out a blessing on 
them, and ask our Saviour to make them His ; and never 
forget what we began with, that they came from God, and 
are going back to Him, and let the light of eternity fall 
upon them as they lie asleep, and may you resolve to 
dedicate them and yourselves to him who died for them 
and for us all, and who was once Himself a little child, 
and sucked the breasts of a woman, and who said that 
awful saying, " Whosoever shall offend one of these little 
ones, it had been better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the 
midst of the sea." 



SERMON IV. 

HEALTH. 

MY DEAR FRIENDS, — I am going to give you 
a sort of sermon about your health, — and you 
know a sermon has always a text ; so, though I am only 
a doctor, I mean to take a text for ours, and I will choose 
it, as our good friends the ministers do, from that best of 
all books, the Bible. Job ii. 4 : " All that a man hath 
wall he give for his life." 

This, you know, was said many thousands of years ago 
by the Devil, when, like a base and impudent fellow, as 



182 HEALTH. 

he always was and is, he came into the presence of the 
great God, along with the good angels. Here, for once 
in his life, the Devil spoke the truth and shamed himself. 

What he meant, and what I wish you now seriously to 
consider, is, that a man — you or I — will lose anything 
sooner than life ; we would give everything for it, and 
part with all the money, everything we had, to keep away 
death and to lengthen our days. If you had £ 500 in a 
box at home, and knew that you would certainly be dead 
by to-morrow unless you gave the £ 500, would you 
ever make a doubt about what you would do ? Not you ! 
And if you were told that if you got drunk, or worked 
too hard, or took no sort of care of your bodily health, 
you would turn ill to-morrow and die next week, would 
you not keep sober, and work more moderately, and be 
more careful of yourself ? 

Now, I want to make you believe that you are too 
apt to do this very same sort of thing in your daily life, 
only that instead of to-morrow or next week, your illness 
and your death comes next year, or at any rate, some 
years sooner than otherwise. But your death is actually 
preparing already, and that by your own hands, by your 
own ignorance, and often by your own foolish and 
sinful neglect and indulgence. A decay or rottenness 
spreads through the beams of a house, unseen and 
unfeared, and then, by and by down it comes, and is 
utterly destroyed. So it is with your bodies. You 
plant, by sin and neglect and folly, the seeds of dis- 
ease by your own hands ; and as surely as the harvest 
comes after the seed-time, so will you reap the harvest of 
pain, and misery, and death. And remember there is 
nobody to whom health is so valuable, is worth so much, 
as to the poor laboring man ; it is his stock-in-trade, his 



HEALTH. 183 

wealth, his capital ; his bodily strength and skill are the 
main things he can make his living by, and therefore he 
should take better care of his body and its health than a 
rich man ; for a rich man may be laid up in his bed for 
weeks and months, and yet his business may go on, for he 
has means to pay his men for working under him, or he 
may be what is called " living on his money." But if a 
poor man takes fever, or breaks his leg, or falls into a con- 
sumption, his wife and children soon want food and 
clothes : and many a time do I see on the streets poor, 
careworn men, dying by inches of consumption, going to 
and from their work, when, poor fellows, they should be 
in their beds ; and all this just because they cannot afford 
to be ill and to lie out of work, — they cannot spare the 
time and the wages. 

Now, don't you think, my dear friends, that it is worth 
your while to attend to your health ? If you were a 
carter or a coach-driver, and had a horse, would you not 
take care to give him plenty of corn, and to keep his 
stable clean and well aired, and to curry his skin well, 
and you would not kill him with overwork, for besides 
the cruelty, this would be a dead loss to you, — it would 
be so much out of your pocket ? And don't you see that 
God has given you your bodies to work with, and to 
please Him with their diligence ; and it is ungrateful to 
Him, as well as unkind and wicked to your family and 
yourself, to waste your bodily strength, and bring disease 
and death upon yourselves ? But you will say, " How 
can we make a better of it ? We live from hand to mouth ; 
we can't have fine houses and warm clothes, and rich 
food and plenty of it." No, I know that ; but if you 
have not a fine house, you may always have a clean one, 
and fresh air costs nothing, — God gives it to all his chil- 



184 HEALTH. 

dren without stint, — and good plain clothes, and meal, 
may now be had cheaper than ever. 

Health is a word that you all have some notion of, but 
you will perhaps have a clearer idea of it when I tell you 
what the word comes from. Health was long ago wholth^ 
and comes from the word whole or hale» The Bible says, 
" They that are whole need not a physician '^ ; that is, 
healthy people have no need of a doctor. Now, a man 
is whole when, like a bowl or any vessel, he is entire, 
and has nothing broken about him ; he is like a watch 
that goes well, neither too fast nor too slow. But you 
will perhaps say, " You doctors should be able to put us 
all to rights, just as a watchmaker can clean and sort a 
watch ; if you can't, what are you worth ? " But the 
difference between a man and a watch is, that you must 
try to mend the man when he is going. You can't stop 
him and then set him agoing ; and, you know, it would 
be no joke to a watchmaker, or to the watch, to try 
and clean it while it was going. But God, who does 
everything like Himself, with his own perfectness, has 
put inside each of our bodies a Doctor of his own making, 
— one wiser than we with all our wisdom. Every one 
of us has in himself a power of keeping and setting his 
health right. If a man is overworked, God has ordained 
that he desires rest, and that rest cures him. If he lives 
in a damp, close place, free and dry air cures him. If he 
eats too much, fasting cures him. If his skin is dirty, 
a good scrubbing and a bit of yellow soap will put him 
all to rights. 

What we call disease or sickness, is the opposite of 
health, and it comes on us, — 1st. By descent from our 
parents. It is one of the surest of all legacies ; if a man's 
father and mother are diseased, naturally or artificially 



HEALTH. 185 

he will have much chance to be as bad, or worse. 2dly. 
Hard work brings on disease, and some kinds of work 
more than others. Masons who hew often fall into con- 
sumption ; laborers get rheumatism, or what you call 
" the pains " ; painters get what is called their colic, from 
the lead in the paint, and so on. In a world like ours, 
this set of causes of disease and ill health cannot be 
altogether got the better of; and it was God's command, 
after Adam's sin, that men should toil and sweat for their 
daily bread ; but more than the half of the bad effects of 
hard work and dangerous employments might be pre- 
vented by a little plain knowledge, attention, and com- 
mon sense. 3dly. Sin, wickedness, foolish and excessive 
pleasures, are a great cause of disease. Thousands die 
from drinking, and from following other evil courses. 
There is no life so hard, none in which the poor body 
comes so badly off, and is made so miserable as the life 
of a drunkard or a dissolute man. I need hardly tell you, 
that this cause of death and disease you can all avoid. I 
don't say it is easy for any man in your circumstances to 
keep from sin ; he is a foolish or ignorant man who says so, 
and that there are no temptations to drinking. You are 
much less to blame for doing this than people who are 
better off; but you can keep from drinking, and you 
know as well as I do, how much better and happier, and 
healthier and richer and more respectable you will be if 
you do so. 4thly and lastly. Disease and death are often 
brought on from ignorance, from not knowing what are 
called the laws of health, — those easy, plain, common 
things which, if you do, you will live long, and which, if 
you do not do, you will die soon. 

Now, I would like to make a few simple statements 
about this to you ; and I will take the body bit by bit, 



186 HEALTH. 

and tell you some things that you should know and do in 
order to keep this wonderful house that your soul lives 
in, and by the deeds done in which you will one day be 
judged, and which is God's gift, and God's handiwork, — 
clean and comfortable, hale, strong, and hearty ; for you 
know, that besides doing good to ourselves and our family 
and our neighbors with our bodily labor, we are told that 
we should glorify God in our bodies as well as in our 
souls, for they are His, more His than ours, — He has 
bought them by the blood of His Son Jesus. Christ. We 
are not our own, we are bought with a price ; therefore 
ought we to glorify God with our souls and with our 
bodies, which are His. 

Now, first, for the skin. You should take great care 
of it, for on its health a great deal depends; keep it 
clean, keep it warm, keep it dry, give it air; have a 
regular scrubbing of all your body every Saturday night, 
and if you can manage it, you should every morning wash 
not only your face, but your throat and breast with cold 
water, and rub yourself quite dry with a hard towel till 
you glow all over. You should keep your hair short if 
you are men ; it saves you a great deal of trouble and 
dirt. 

Then, the inside of your head^ — you know what is in- 
side your head, — your brain ; you know how useful it is 
to you ; the cleverest pair of hands among you would be 
of little use without brains, they would be like a body 
without a soul, a watch with the mainspring broken. 
Now, you should consider what is best for keeping the 
brain in good trim. One thing of great consequence is 
regular sleep ^ and plenty of it, Everyman should have 
at the least eight hours in his bed every four-and-twenty 
hours, and let him sleep all the time if he can ; but even 



HEALTH. 187 

if he lies awake it is a rest to his wearied brain, as well 
as to his wearied legs and arms. Sleep is the food of the 
brain. Men may go mad and get silly, if they go long 
without sleep. Too much sleep is bad ; but I need 
hardly warn you against that, or against too much meat. 
You are in no great danger from these. 

Then, again, whiskey and all kinds of intoxicating 
liquors, in excess, are just so much poison to the brain. 
I need not say much about this, you all know it ; and we 
all know what dreadful things happen when a man 
poisons his brain and makes it mad, and like a wild beast 
with drink ; he may murder his wife, or his child, and 
when he comes to himself he knows nothing of how he 
did it, only the terrible thing is certain, that he did do it, 
and that he may be hanged for doing something when he 
was mad, and which he never dreamt of doing when in 
his senses; but then he knows that he made himself 
mad, and he must take all the wretched and tremendous 
consequences. 

From the brains we go to the lungs^ — you know 
where they are, — they are what the butchers call the 
lichts ; here they are, they are the bellows that keep the 
fire of life going ; for you must know that a clever Ger- 
man philosopher has made out that we are all really 
burning, — that our bodies are warmed by a sort of 
burning or combustion, as it is called, — and fed by 
breath and food, as a fire is fed with coals and air. 

Now the great thing for the lungs is plenty of fresh 
air, and plenty of room to play in. About seventy thou- 
sand people die every year in Britain from that disease of 
the lungs called consumption, — that is, nearly half the 
number of people in the city of Edinburgh ; and it is cer- 
tain that more than the half of these deaths could be pre- 



188 HEALTH. 

vented if the lungs had fair play. So you should always 
try to get your houses well ventilated, that means to let 
the air be often changed, and free from impure mixtures ; 
and you should avoid crowding many into one room, and 
be careful to keep everything clean, and put away all 
filth ; for filth is not only disgusting to the eye and the 
nose, but it is dangerous to the health. I have seen a 
great deal of cholera, and been surrounded by dying 
people, who were beyond any help from doctors, and I 
have always found that where the air was bad, the rooms 
ill ventilated, cleanliness neglected, and drunkenness 
prevailed, there this terrible scourge, which God sends 
upon us, was most terrible, most rapidly and widely de- 
structive. Believe this, and go home and consider well 
what I now say, for you may be sure it is true. 

Now we come to the heart You all know where it is. 
It is the most wonderful little pump in the world. There 
is no steam-engine half so clever at its work, or so strong. 
There it is in every one of us, beat, beating, — all day 
and all night, year after year, never stopping, like a 
watch ticking ; only it never needs to be wound up, — 
God winds it up once for all. It depends for its health 
on the state of the rest of the body, especially the brains 
and lungs. But all violent passions, all irregularities of 
living, damage it. Exposure to cold when drunk, falling 
asleep, as many poor wretches do, in stairs all night, — 
this often brings on disease of the heart ; and you know 
it is not only dangerous to have anything the matter 
with the heart ; it is the commonest of all causes of sudden 
death. It gives no warning ; you drop down dead in a 
moment. So we may say of the bodily as well as of the 
moral organ, " Keep your heart with all diligence ; for 
out of it are the issues of life." 



HEALTH. 189 

We now come to the stomach. You all know, 1 dare 
say, where it lies ! It speaks for itself. Our friends in 
England are very respectful to their stomachs. They 
make a great deal of them, and we make too little. If an 
Englishman is ill, all the trouble is in his stomach ; if an 
Irishman is ill, it is in his heart, and he 's "kilt entirely " ; 
and if a Scotsman, it is in his " heed." Now, I wish I 
saw Scots men and women as nice and particular about 
their stomachs, or rather about what they put into them, 
as their friends in England. Indeed, so much does your 
genuine John Bull depend on his stomach, and its satis- 
faction, that we may put in his mouth the stout old lines 
of Prior : — 

" The plainest man alive may tell ye 
The seat of empire is the Belly : 
From hence are sent out those supplies, 
Which make us either stout or wise ; 
The strength of every other member 
Is founded on your Belly-timber ; 
The qualms or raptures of your blood 
Rise in proportion to your food, 
Your stomach makes your fabric roll, 
Just as the bias rules the bowl: 
That great Achilles might employ 
The strength designed to ruin Troy, 
He dined on lions' marrow, spread 
On toasts of ammunition bread ; 
But by his mother sent away, 
Amongst the Thracian girls to play, 
Effeminate he sat and quiet; 
Strange product of a cheese-cake diet. 
Observe the various operations, 
Of food and drink in several nations. 
Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel, 
Upon the strength of water-gruel? 
But who shall stand his rage and force, 
If first he rides, then eats his horse ! 
Salads and eggs, and lighter fare, 
Turn the Italian spark's guitar; 



190 HEALTH. 

And if I take Dan Congreve right, 
Pudding and beef make Britons fight." 

Good cooking is the beauty of a dinner. It really does 
a man as much good again if he eats his food with a relish ; 
and with a little attention, it is as easy to cook well as ill. 
And let me tell the wives, that your husbands would 
like you all the better, and be less likely to go off to the 
public-house, if their bit of meat or their drop of broth 
were well cooked. Laboring men should eat well. They 
should, if possible, have meat — hutcher-meat — every day. 
Good broth is a capital dish. But, above all, keep whis- 
key out of your stomachs ; it really plays the very devil 
when it gets in. It makes the brain mad, it burns the 
coats of the stomach ; it turns the liver into a lump of 
rottenness ; it softens and kills the heart ; it makes a man 
an idiot and a brute. If you really need anything strong- 
er than good meat, take a pot of wholesome porter or ale ; 
but I believe you are better without even that. You 
will be all the better able to afford good meat, and plenty 
of it. 

With regard to your bowels^ — a very important part 
of your interior, — I am not going to say much, except 
that neglect of them brings on many diseases ; and labor- 
ing men are very apt to neglect them. Many years ago, 
an odd old man, at Greenock, left at his death a number 
of sealed packets to his friends, and on opening them they 
found a Bible, £50, and a box of pills, and the words, 
" Fear God, and keep your bowels open." It was good 
advice, though it might have been rather more decorously 
worded. If you were a doctor, you would be astonished 
how many violent diseases of the mind, as well as of the 
body, are produced by irregularity of the bowels. Many 
years ago, an old minister, near Linlithgow, was wakened 



HEALTH. 191 

out of his sleep to go to see a great lady in the neighbor- 
hood who was thought dying, and whose mind was in 
dreadful despair, and who wished to see him immediately. 
The old man, rubbing his eyes, and pushing up his Kil- 
marnock nightcap, said, " And when were her leddyship's 
booels opened?" And on finding, after some inquiry^ 
that they were greatly in arrears, " I thocht sae. Rax 
me ower that pill-box on the chimney-piece, and gie my 
compliments to Leddy Margret, and tell her to tak thae 
twa pills, and 1 11 be ower by and by myseV." They did 
as he bade them. They did their duty, and the pills did 
theirs, and her leddyship was relieved, and she w^as able 
at breakfast-time to profit by the Christian advice of the 
good old man, which she could not have done when her 
nerves were all wrong. The old Greeks, who were al- 
ways seeking after wisdom, and did n't always find it, 
showed their knowledge and sense in calling depression 
of mind Melancholy, which means black bile. Leddy 
Margret's liver, I have no doubt, had been distilling this 
perilous stufil 

My dear friends, there is one thing I have forgot to 
mention, and that is, about keeping common-stairs clean ; 
you know they are often abominably filthy, and they ag- 
gravate fever, and many of your worst and most deadly 
diseases ; for you may keep your own houses never so 
clean and tidy, but if the common-stair is not kept clean 
too, all its foul air comes into your rooms, and into your 
lungs, and poisons you. So let all in the stair resolve to 
keep it clean, and well aired. 

But I must stop now. I fear I have wearied you. 
You see I had nothing new to tell you. The great thing 
in regulating and benefiting human life, is not to find out 
new things, but to make the best of the old things, — to 



192 HEALTH. 

live according to Nature, and the will of Nature's God, — 
that great Being who bids us call Him our Father, and 
who is at this very moment regarding each one of us with 
far more than any earthly father's compassion and kind- 
ness, and who would make us all happy if we would but 
do His bidding, and take His road. He has given us 
minds by which we may observe the laws He has or- 
dained in our bodies, and which are as regular and as 
certain in their effects, and as discoverable by us as the 
motions of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens ; and 
we shall not only benefit ourselves and live longer and 
work better and be happier, by knowing and obeying 
these laws, from love to ourselves, but we shall please 
Him, we shall glorify Him, and make Him our Friend, — 
only think of that ! and get His blessing, by taking care 
of our health, from love to Him, and a regard to His will, 
in giving us these bodies of ours to serve Him with, and 
which He has, with His own almighty hands, so fearfully 
and wonderfully made. 

I hope you will pardon my plainness in speaking to 
you. I am quite in earnest, and I have a deep regard, I 
may say a real affection, for you?^, for I know you well. 
I spent many of my early years as a doctor in going 
about among you. I have attended you long ago when 
ill ; I have delivered your wives, and been in your houses 
when death was busy with you and yours, and I have 
seen your fortitude, energy, and honest, hearty, generous 
kindness to . each other ; your readiness to help your 
neighbors with anything you have, and to share your last 
sixpence and your last loaf with them. I Vish I saw 
half as much real neighborliness and sympathy among 
what are called your betters. If a poor man falls down 
in a fit on the street, who is it that takes him up and car- 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 193 

ries him home, and gives him what he needs ? it is not 
the man with a fine coat and gloves on, — it is the poor, 
dirty-coated, hard-handed, warm-hearted laboring man. 

Keep a good hold of all these homely and sturdy vir- 
tues, and add to them temperance and diligence, cleanli- 
ness and thrift, good knowledge, and, above all, the love 
and the fear of God, and you will not only be happy 
yourselves, but you will make this great and wonderful 
country of ours which rests upon you still more wonder- 
ful and great. 



SERMON V. 

MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 

MY DEAR FRIENDS, — We are going to ring 
in now, and end our course. I will be sorry 
and glad, and you will be the same. We are this 
about everything. It is the proportion that settles it. 
I am, upon the whole, as we say, sorry, and I dare say 
on the whole you are not glad. I dislike parting with 
anything or anybody I like, for it is ten to one if we 
meet again. 

My text is, " That his way may he known upon earth ; 
his saving health to all nations^^ You will find it in that 
perfect little psalm, the 67th. But before taking it up, 
I will, as my dear father used to say, — you all remem- 
ber him, his keen eye and voice ; his white hair, and his 
grave, earnest, penetrating look ; and you should remem- 
ber and possess his Canongate Sermon to you, — " The 
Bible, what it is, what it does, and what it deserves," — 

9 M 



194 HEALTH. 

well, he used to say, let us recapitulate a little. It is a 
long and rather kittle word, but it is the only one that we 
have. He made it longer, but not less alive, by turning 
it into " a few recapitulatory remarks." What ground 
then have we travelled over ? First, oar duties to and 
about the Doctor ; to call him in time, to trust him, to 
obey him, to be grateful to, and to pay him with our 
money and our hearts and our good word, if we have all 
these ; if we have not the first, with twice as much of the 
others. Second., The Doctor's duties to us. He should 
be able and willing to cure us. That is what he is there 
for. He should be sincere, attentive, and tender to us, 
keeping his time and our secrets. We must tell him all 
we know about our ailments and their causes, and he must 
tell us all that is good for us to know, and no more. 
Third, Your duties to your children ; to the wee Willie 
Winkies and the little wifies that come toddlin' hame. It 
is your duty to mind them. It is a capital Scotch use of 
this word : they are to be in your mind ; you are to exer- 
cise your understanding about them ; to give them simple 
food ; to keep goodies and trash, and raw pears and whis- 
key away from their tender mouths and stomachs ; to 
give them that never-ending meal of good air, night and 
day, which is truly food and fire to them and you ; to be 
good before as well as to them, to speak and require the 
truth in love, — that is a wonderful expression, is n't it ? 
— the truth in love ; that, if acted on by us all, would 
bring the millennium next week ; to be plain and homely 
with them, never spaining their minds from you. You 
are all sorry, you mothers, when you have to spain their 
mouths; it is a dreadful business that to both parties; 
but there is a spaining of the affections still more dread- 
ful, and that need never be, no, never, neither in this 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 195 

world nor in that which is to come. Dr. Waugh, of Lon- 
don, used to say to bereaved mothers, Rachels weeping 
for their children, and refusing to be comforted, for that 
simplest of all reasons, because they were not ; after giv- 
ing them God's words of comfort, clapping them on the 
shoulders, and fixing his mild deep eyes on them (those 
who remember those eyes will know what they could 
mean), " My woman, your bairn is where it will have two 
fathers, but never but one mother." 

You should also, when t|ie time comes, explain to your 
children what about their own health and the ways of the 
world they ought to know, and for the want of the time- 
ly knowledge of which many a life and character has 
been lost. Show them, moreover, the value you put 
upon health, by caring for your own. 

Do your best to get your sons well married, and soon. 
By " well married," I mean that they should pair off old- 
fashionedly, for love, and marry what deserves to be 
loved, as well as what is lovely. I confess I think falling 
in love is the best way to begin ; but then the moment 
you fall, you should get up and look about you, and see 
how the land lies, and whether it is as goodly as it looks. 
I don't like walking into love, or being carried into love ; 
or, above all, being sold or selling yourself into it, which, 
after all, is not it. And by " soon," I mean as soon as 
they are keeping themselves ; for a wife, such a wife as 
alone I mean, is cheaper to a young man than no wife, 
and is his best companion. 

Then for your duties to yourselves. See that you 
make yourself do what is immediately just to your body, 
feed it when it is really hungry ; let it sleep when it, not 
its master, desires sleep ; make it happy, poor hard- 
working fellow ! and give it a gambol when it wants it 



196 HEALTH. 

and deserves it, and as long as it can execute it. Dancing 
is just the music of the feet, and the gladness of the young 
legs, and is well called the poetry of motion. It is like 
all other natural pleasures, given to be used, and to be 
not abused, either by yourself or by those who don't like 
it, and don't enjoy your doing it, — shabby dogs these, 
beware of them ! And if this be done, it is a good and a 
grace, as well as pleasure, and satisfies some good end of 
our being, and in its own way glorifies our Maker. Did 
you ever see anything in this world more beautiful than 
the lambs running races and dancing round the big stone 
of the field ; and does not your heart get young when 
you hear, — 

" Here we go by Jingo ring, 
Jingo ring, Jingo ring; 
Here we go by Jingo ring, 
About the merry ma tanzie." 

This is just a dance in honor of poor old pagan Jingo ; 
measured movements arising from and giving happiness. 
We have no right to keep ourselves or others from nat- 
ural pleasures ; and we are all too apt to interfere with 
and judge harshly the pleasures of others ; hence we who 
are stiff* and given to other pleasures, and who, now that 
we are old, know the many wickednesses of the world, 
are too apt to put the vices of the jaded, empty old heart, 
like a dark and ghastly fire burnt out, into the feet and 
the eyes, and the heart and the head of the young. I 
remember a story of a good old Antiburgher minister. It 
was in the days when dancing was held to be a great sin, 
and to be dealt with by the session. Jessie, a comely, 
and good, and blithe young woman, a great favorite of the 
minister's, had been guilty of dancing at a friend's wed- 
ding. She was summoned before the session to be " dealt 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 197 

with," — the grim old fellows sternly concentrating their 
eyes upon her, as she stood trembling in her striped short- 
gown, and her pretty bare feet. The Doctor, who was one 
of divinity, and a deep thinker, greatly pitying her and 
himself, said, " Jessie, my woman, were ye dancin' ? " 

" Yes," sobbed Jessie. 

" Ye maun e'en promise never to dance again, Jessie." 

" I wull, sir ; I wull promise," with a curtsy. 

" Now, what were ye thinking o', Jessie, when ye were 
dancin' ? tell us truly," said an old elder, who had been a 
poacher in youth. 

" Nae ill, sir," sobbed out the dear little woman. 

" Then, Jessie, my woman, aye dance," cried the de- 
lighted Doctor. 

And so say I^ to the extent, that so long as our young 
girls think " nae ill," they may dance their own and their 
feet's fills ; and so on with all the round of the sunshine 
and flowers God has thrown on and along the path of his 
children. 

Lastly, your duty to your own bodies : to preserve 
them ; to make, or rather let — for they are made so to 
go — their wlieels go sweetly; to keep the girs firm 
round the old barrel ; neither to over nor underwork our 
bodies, and to listen to their teaching and their requests, 
their cries of pain and sorrow ; and to keep them as well 
as your souls unspotted from the world. If you want to 
know a good book on Physiology, or the Laws of Health 
and of Life, get Dr. Combe's Physiology ; and let all you 
mothers get his delightful Management of Infancy, You 
will love him for his motherly words. You will almost 
think he might have worn petticoats, — for tenderness he 
might; but in mind and will and eye he was every inch 
a man. It is now long since he wrote, but I have seen 



198 HEALTH. 

nothing so good since ; he is so intelligent, so reverent, so 
full of the solemnity, the sacredness, the beauty, and joy 
of life, and its work ; so full of sympathy for suffering, 
himself not ignorant of such evil, — for the latter half of 
his life was a daily, hourly struggle with death, fighting 
the destroyer from within with the weapons of life, his 
brain and his conscience. It is very little physiology that 
you require, so that it is physiology, and is suitable for 
your need. I can't say I like our common people, or 
indeed, what we call our ladies and gentlemen, poking 
curiously into all the ins and outs of our bodies as a gen- 
eral accomplishment, and something to talk of. No, 
I don't like it. I would rather they chose some other 
ology. But let them get enough to give them awe and 
love, light and help, guidance and foresight. 

These, with good sense and good senses, humility, and 
a thought of a hereafter in this world as well as in the 
next, will make us as able to doctor ourselves — especially 
to act in the preventive service, which is your main region 
of power for good — as in this mortal world we have any 
reason to expect. And let us keep our hearts young, and 
they will keep our legs and our arms the same. For we 
know now that hearts are kept going by having strong, 
pure, lively blood ; if bad blood goes into the heart, it 
gets angry, and shows this by beating at our breasts, and 
frightening us ; and sometimes it dies of sheer anger and 
disgust, if its blood is poor or poisoned, thin and white. 
" He may dee, but he '11 never grow aiild," said a canty 
old wife of her old minister, whose cheek was ruddy like 
an apple. 

Run for the Doctor ; don't saunter to him, or go in, by 
the by, as an old elder of my father's did, when his 
house was on fire. He was a perfect Nathanael, and 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 199 

lived more m the next world than in this, as you will 
soon see. One winter night he slipped gently into his 
neighbor's cottage, and found James Somerville reading 
aloud by the blaze of the licht coal ; he leant over the 
chair, and waited till James closed the book, when he 
said, '' By the by, I am thinkin' ma hoose is on fire ! " 
and out he and they all ran, in time to see the auld biggin' 
fall in with a glorious blaze. So it is too often when that 
earthly house of ours — our cottage, our tabernacle — is 
getting on fire. One moment your finger would put out 
what in an hour all the waters of Clyde would be too late 
for. If the Doctor is needed, the sooner the better. If 
he is not, he can tell you so, and you can rejoice that he 
had a needless journey, and pay him all the more thank- 
fully. So run early and at once. How many deaths — 
how many lives of sufifering and incapacity — may be 
spared by being in time ? by being a day or two sooner. 
With children this is especially the case, and with work- 
ingmen in the full prime of life. A mustard plaster, a 
leech, a pill, fifteen drops of Ipecacuanha wine, a bran 
poultice, a hint, or a stitch in time, may do all and at 
once ; when a red-hot iron, a basinful of blood, all the 
wisdom of our art, and all the energy of the Doctor, all 
your tenderness and care, are in vain. Many a child's 
life is saved by an emetic at night, who would be lost in 
twelve hours. So send in time ; it is just to your child 
or the patient, and to yourself ; it is just to your Doctor ; 
for I assure you we Doctors are often sorry, and angry 
enough, when we find we are too late. It aflfronts us, and 
our powers, besides affronting life and all its meanings, 
and Him who gives it. And we really enjoy curing ; it 
is like running and winning a race, — like hunting and 
finding and kilHng our game. And then remember to go 



200 HEALTH. 

to the Doctor early in the day, as well as in the disease. 
I always like my patients to send and say that they 
would like the Doctor " to call before he goes out ! " This 
is like an Irish message, you will say ; but there is " sinse " 
in it. Fancy a Doctor being sent for, just as he is in 
bed, to see some one, and on going he finds they had 
been thinking of sending in the morning, and that he has 
to run neck and neck with death, with the odds all 
against him. 

I now wind up with some other odds and ends. I 
give you them as an old wife would empty her pockets, 
— such wallets they use to be ! — in no regular order ; 
here a bit of string, now a bit of gingerbread, now an 
" aiple," now a bunch of keys, now an old almanac, now 
three bawbees and a bad shilling, a " wheen " buttons all 
marrowless, a thimble, a bit of black sugar, and may be at 
the very bottom a " goold guinea." 

Shoes, — It is amazing the misery the people of civil- 
ization endure in and from their shoes. Nobody is ever, 
as they should be, comfortable at once in them ; they 
hope in the long-run and after much agony, and when 
they are nearly done, to make them fit, especially if they 
can get them once well wet, so that the mighty knob of 
the big toe may adjust himself and be at ease. For my 
part, if I were rich, I would advertise for a clean, whole- 
some man, whose foot was exactly my size, and I would 
make him wear my shoes till I could put them on, and 
not know I was in them.^ Why is all this ? Why do 
you see every man's and woman's feet so out of shape ? 
Why are there corns, with their miseries and maledic- 

* Frederick the Great kept an aid-de-camp for this purpose, and, 
poor fellow ! he sometimes wore them too long, and got a kicking for 
his pains. 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 201 

tions ? why the virulence and unreachableness of those 
that are " soft " ? Why do our nails grow in and some- 
times have to be torn violently off? 

All because the makers and users of shoes have not 
common sense, and common reverence for God and his 
works enough to study the shape and motions of that 
wonderful pivot on which we turn and progress. Be- 
cause Fashion, — that demon that I wish I saw dressed 
in her own crinoline, in bad shoes, a man's old hat, and 
trailing petticoats, and with her (for she must be a her) 
waist well nipt by a circlet of nails with the points in- 
most, and any other of the small torments, mischiefs, and 
absurdities she destroys and makes fools of us with, — 
whom, I say, I wish I saw drummed and hissed, blazing 
and shrieking, out of the world ; because this contempti- 
ble slave, which domineers over her makers, says the shoe 
must be elegant, must be so and so, and the beautiful liv- 
ing foot must be crushed into it, and human nature must 
limp along Princess Street and through life natty and 
wretched. 

It makes me angry when I think of all this. Now, do 
you want to know how to put your feet into new shoes, 
and yourself into a new world ? go and buy from Edmons- 
ton and Douglas sixpence worth of sense, in Why the Shoe 
Pinches ; you will, if you get your shoemaker to do as it 
bids him, go on your ways rejoicing ; no more knobby, 
half-dislocated big toes ; no more secret parings, and 
slashings desperate, in order to get on that pair of exqui- 
site boots or shoes. 

Then there is the Infirmary, — Nothing I like better 
than to see subscriptions to this admirable house of help 
and comfort to the poor, advertised as from the quarry- 
men of Craigleith ; from Mr. Milne the brassfounder'a 
9* 



202 HEALTH. 

men ; from Peeblesshire ; from the utmost Orkneys ; and 
from those big, human mastiffs, the navvies. And yet we 
doctors are often met by the most absurd and obstinate 
objections by domestic servants in town, and by country 
people, to going there. This prejudice is lessening, but 
it is still great. " Oh, I canna gang into the Infirmary ; 
I would rather dee ! " Would you, indeed ? Not you, or 
if so, the sooner the better. They have a notion that 
they are experimented on, and slain by the surgeons ; 
neglected and poisoned by the nurses, etc., etc. Such 
utter nonsense ! I know well about the inner life and 
work of at least our Infirmary, and of that noble, old 
Minto House, now gone ; and I would rather infinitely, 
were I a servant, 'prentice boy, or shopman, a porter, or 
student, and anywhere but in a house of my own, and 
even then, go straight to the Infirmary, than lie in a box- 
bed off the kitchen, or on the top of the coal-bunker, or in 
a dark hole in the lobby, or in a double-bedded room. 
The food, the bedding, the physicians, the surgeons, the 
clerks, the dressers, the medicines, the wine and porter, 
— and they don't scrimp these when necessary, — the 
books, the Bibles, the baths, are all good ; are all better 
far than one man in ten thousand can command in his 
own house. So off with a grateful heart and a fearless to 
the Infirmary, and your mistress can come in and sit be- 
side you ; and her doctor and yours will look in and 
single you out with his smile and word, and cheer you 
and the ward by a kindly joke, and you will come out 
well cured, and having seen much to do you good for life. 
I never knew any one who was once in, afraid of going 
back ; they know better. 

There are few things in human nature finer than the 
devotion and courage of medical men to their hospital 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 203 

and charitable duties ; it is to them a great moral dis- 
cipline ; not that they don't get good, selfish good to them- 
selves. Why should n't they ? Nobody does good without 
getting it ; it is a law of the government of God. But, as 
a rule, our medical men are not kind and skilful and at- 
tentive to their hospital patients, because this is to make 
them famous, or even because through this they are to get 
knowledge and fame ; they get all this, and it is their only 
and their great reward ; but they are in the main disin- 
terested men. Honesty is the best policy ; but, as Dr. 
Whately, in his keen way, says, " that man is not honest 
who is so for this reason," and so with the doctors and 
their patients. And I am glad to say for my profession, 
few of them take this second-hand line of duty. 

Beards. — I am for beards out and out, because I think 
the Maker of the beard was and is. This is reason 
enough ; but there are many others. The misery of shav- 
ing, its expense, its consumption of time, — a very cor- 
poration existing for no other purpose but to shave man- 
kind. Campbell the poet, who had always a bad razor, I 
suppose, and was late of rising, said he believed the man 
of civilization who lived to be sixty had suffered more pain 
in littles every day in shaving than a woman with a large 
family had from her lyings-in. This would be hard to 
prove ; but it is a process that never gets pleasanter by 
practice ; and then the waste of time and temper, — the 
ugliness of being ill or unshaven. Now, we can easily see 
advantages in it ; the masculine gender is intended to be 
more out of doors, and more in all weathers than the 
smooth-chinned ones, and this protects him and his Adam's 
apple from harm. It acts as the best of all respirators 
to the mason and the east wind. Besides, it is a glo- 
ry; and it must be delightful to have and to stroke a 



204 HEALTH. 

natural beard, not one like bean-stalks or a bottle-brush, 
but such a beard as Abraham's or Abd-el-Kader's. It 
is the beginning ever to cut, that makes all the differ- 
ence. I hazard a theory, that no hair of the head or beard 
should ever be cut, or needs it, any more than the eye- 
brows or eyelashes. The finest head of hair I know is 
one which was never cut. It is not too long ; it is soft 
and thick. The secret where to stop growing is in the 
end of the native untouched hair. If you cut it off, the 
poor hair does not know when to stop ; and if our eye- 
brows were so cut, they might be made to hang over our 
eyes, and be wrought into a veil. Besides, think of the 
waste of substance of the body in hewing away so much 
hair every morning, and encouraging an endless rotation 
of crops ! Well then, I go in for the beards of the next 
generation, the unshorn beings whose beards will be wag- 
ging when we are away ; but of course they must be 
clean. But how are we to sup our porridge and kail ? 
Try it when young, when there is just a shadowy down 
on the upper lip, and no fears but they will do all this 
"elegantly" even. Nature is slow and gentle in her 
teaching even the accomplishment of the spoon. And as 
for women's hair, don't plaster it with scented and sour 
grease, or with any grease ; it has an oil of its own. And 
don't tie up your hair tight, and make it like a cap of 
iron over your skull. And why are your ears covered ? 
You hear all the worse, and they are not the cleaner. 
Besides, the ear is beautiful in itself, and plays its own 
part in the concert of the features. Go back to the curls 
some of you, and try in everything to dress as it be- 
comes you, and as you become; not as that fine lady, 
or even your own Tibbie or Grizzy chooses to dress, it 
may be becomingly to her. Why should n't we even in 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 205 

dress be more ourselves than somebody or everybody 
else ? 

I had a word about Teeth, Don't get young chil- 
dren's teeth drawn. At least, let this be the rule. 
Bad teeth come of bad health and bad and hot food, and 
much sugar. I can't say I am a great advocate for the 
common people going in for tooth-brushes. No, they are 
not necessary in full health. The healthy man's teeth 
clean themselves, and so does his skin. A good dose of 
Gregory often puts away the toothache. It is a great 
thing, however, to get them early stuffed, if they need it ; 
that really keeps them and your temper whole. For ap- 
pearance' sake merely, I hate false teeth, as I hate a wig. 
But this is not a matter to dogmatize about. I never 
was, I think, deceived by either false hair, or false teeth, 
or false eyes, or false cheeks, for there are in the high — 
I don't call it the great — world, plumpers for making 
the cheeks round, as well as a certain dust for making 
them bloom. But you and I don't enjoy such advan- 
tages. 

Rheumatism is peculiarly a disease of the workingman. 
One old physician said its only cure was patience and 
flannel Another said six weeks. But I think good 
flannel and no drunkenness (observe, I don't say no 
drinking, though very nearly so) are its best preventives. 
It is a curious thing the way in which cold gives rheuma- 
tism. Suppose a man is heated and gets cooled, and be- 
ing very well at any rate, and is sitting or sleeping in a 
draught ; the exposed part is chilled ; the pores of its 
skin, which are always exuding and exhaling waste from 
the body, contract and shut in this bad stuff; it — this is 
my theory — not getting out is taken up by a blunder of 
the deluded absorbents, who are always prowling about 



206 HEALTH. 

for something, and it is returned back to the centre, and 
finds its way into the blood, and poisons it, affecting the 
heart, and carrying bad money, bad change, bad fat, bad 
capital all over the body, making nerves, lungs, everything 
unhappy and angry. This vitiated blood arrives by and 
by at the origin of its mischief, the chilled shoulder, and 
here it wreaks its vengeance, and in doing so, does some 
general good at local expense. It gives pain ; it produces 
a certain inflammation of its own, and if it is not got rid 
of by the skin and other ways, it may possibly kill by the 
rage the body gets in, and the heat ; or it may inflame 
the ill-used heart itself, and then either kill, or give the 
patient a life of suffering and peril. The medicines we 
give act not only by detecting this poison of blood, which, 
like yeast, leavens all in its neighborhood ; but by send- 
ing it out of the body like a culprit. 

Vaccination. — One word for this. Never neglect it ; 
get it done within two months after birth, and see that it 
is well done ; and get all your neighbors to do it. 

Infectious Diseases. — Keep out of their way ; kill 
them by fresh air and cleanliness ; defy them by cheer- 
fulness, good food (letter food than usual, in such epidem- 
ics as cholera), good sleep, and a good conscience. 

When in the midst of and waiting on those who are 
under the scourge of an epidemic, be as little very close 
to the patient as you can, and don't inhale his or her 
breath or exhalations when you can help it ; be rather in 
the current to, than from him. Be very cleanly in put- 
ting away all excretions at once, and quite away; go 
frequently into the fresh air ; and don't sleep in your day 
clothes. Do what the Doctor bids you ; don't crowd 
round your dying friend ; you are stealing his life in 
taking his air, and you are quietly killing yourself This 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 207 

is one of the worst and most unmanageable of our Scottish 
habits, and many a time have I cleared the room of all but 
one, and dared them to enter it. 

Then you should, in such things as small-pox, as in- 
deed in everything, carry out the Divine injunction, 
" Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do 
ye even so to them." Don't send for the minister to 
pray with and over the body of a patient in fever or de- 
lirium, or a child dying of small-pox or malignant scarlet 
fever ; tell him, by all means, and let him pray with you, 
and for your child. Prayers, you know, are like gravita- 
tion, or the light of heaven ; they will go from whatever 
place they are uttered ; and if they are real prayers, they 
go straight and home to the centre, the focus of all things ; 
and you know that poor fellow with the crust of typhus 
on his lips, and its nonsense on his tongue, — that child 
tossing in misery, not knowing even its own mother, — 
what can they know, what heed can they give to the 
prayer of the minister ? He may do all the good he can, 
the most good may be, when, like Moses on the hillside, 
in the battle with Amalek, he uplifts his hands apart. 
No ! a word spoken by your minister to himself and his 
God, a single sigh for mercy to Him who is Mercy, a cry 
of hope, of despair of self, opening into trust in Him, may 
save that child's life, when an angel might pour forth in 
vain his burning, imploring words into the dull, or wild 
ears of the sufferer, in the vain hope of getting him to 
pray. I never would allow my father to go to typhus 
cases ; and I don't think they lost anything by it. I 
have seen him rising in the dark of his room from his 
knees, and I knew whose case he had been laying at the 
footstool. 

And now, my dear friends, I find I have exhausted 



208 HEALTH. 

our time, and never yet got to the sermon — and its text 
— " That the way of God " — what is it ? it is His design 
in setting you here ; it is the road He wishes you to walk 
in ; it is His providence in your minutest as in the world's 
mightiest things ; it is His will expressed in His works 
and word, and in your own soul it is His salvation. 
That it " may he hnown^^ that the understandings of His 
intelligent, responsible, mortal and immortal creatures 
should be directed to it, to study and (as far as we ever 
can or need) to understand that which, in its fulness, 
passes all understanding ; that it may be known " on the 
earth^^ here, in this very room, this very minute ; not as 
too many preachers and performers do, to be known only 
in the next world, men who, looking at the stars, stumble 
at their own door, and it may be smoor their own child, 
besides despising, upsetting, and extinguishing their own 
lantern. No ! the next world is only to be reached 
through this, and our road through this our wilderness is 
not safe unless on the far beyond there is shining the 
lighthouse on the other side of the dark river that has 
no bridge. Then " His saving health " ; His health — 
whose ? — God's — His soundness, the wholeness, the 
perfectness that is alone in and from Him, — health of 
body, of heart, and brain, health to the finger-ends, health 
for eternity as well as time. " Saving " ; we need to be 
saved, and we are salvable, this is much ; and God's 
health can save us, that is more. When a man or wo- 
man is fainting from loss of blood, we sometimes try to 
save them, when all but gone, by transfusing the warm 
rich blood of another into their veins. Now this is what 
God, through His Son, desires to do ; to transfuse His 
blood. Himself, through His Son, who is Himself, into us, 
diseased and weak. " And^' refers to His health being 



MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 209 

^'known^^ recognized, accepted, used, ''among all na- 
tions " ; not among the U.P.s, or the Frees, or the Resid- 
uaries, or the Baptists, or the New Jerusalem people, — 
nor among us in the Canongate, or in Biggar, or even in 
old Scotland, but " among all nations " ; then, and only- 
then, will the people praise Thee, O God ; will all the 
people praise Thee. Then, and then only, will the earth 
yield her increase, and God, even our own God, will bless 
us. God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall 
fear Him. 

And now, my dear and patient friends, we must say 
good night. You have been very attentive, and it has 
been a great pleasure to me as we went on to preach to 
you. We came to understand one another. You saw 
through my jokes, and that they were not always nothing 
but jokes. You bore with my solemnities, because I am 
not altogether solemn ; and so good night, and God bless 
you, and may you, as Don Quixote, on his death-bed, 
says to Sancho, May you have your eyes closed by the 
soft fingers of your great-grandchildren. But no, I must 
shake hands with you, and kiss the bairns — why should n't 
I ? if their mouths are clean and their breath sweet ? As 
for you, Ailie^ you are wearying for the child ; and he is 
tumbling and fretting in his cradle, and wearying for you ; 
good by, and away you go on your milky way. I wish I 
could (unseen) see you two enjoying each other. And 
good night, my bonnie wee wijie ; you are sleepy, and 
you must be up to make your father's porridge ; and 
Master William Winkie, will you be still for one moment 
while I address you ? Well, Master William, wamble not 
off your mother's lap, neither rattle in your excruciating 
way in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon ; no more crowing 
like a cock, or skirlin' like a ken-na-what. I had much 



210 HEALTH 

more to say to you, sir, but you will not bide still ; off 
with you, and a blessing with you. 

Good night, Hugh Cleland, the best smith of any 
smiddy ; with your bowly back, your huge arms, your big 
heavy brows and eyebrows, your clear eye, and warm un- 
forgetting heart. And you, John Noble ^ let me grip 
your horny hand, and count the queer knobs made by the 
perpetual mell. I used, when I was a Willie Winkie, 
and wee, to think that you were born with them. Never 
mind, you were born for them, and of old you handled 
the trowel well, and built to the plumb. Thomas Ber- 
tram, your loom is at a discount, but many 's the happy 
day I have watched you and your shuttle, and the inter- 
weaving treadles, and all the mysteries of setting the 
" wab." You are looking well, and though not the least 
of an ass, you might play Bottom must substantially yet. 
Andrew Wilson, across the waste of forty years and more 
I snuff the fragrance of your shop ; have you forgiven me 
yet for stealing your paint-pot (awful joy !) for ten min- 
utes to adorn my rabbit-house, and for blunting your pet 
farmer ? Wise you were always, and in the saw-pit you 
spoke little, and wore your crape. Yourself wears well, 
but take heed of swallowing your shavings unawares, as 
is the trick of you " wrights " ; they confound the interior 
and perplex the Doctor. 

I^ob Hough, you smell of rosin, and your look is stern, 
nevertheless, or all the rather, give me your hand. What 
a grip ! You hare been the most sceptical of all my 
hearers ; you like to try everything, and you hold fast 
only what you consider good ; and then on your crepida 
or stool, you have your own think about everything hu- 
man and divine, as you smite down errors on the lapstane, 
and " yerk " your arguments with a well-rosined Hngle ; 



MEDICAL ODpS AND END. 211 

throw your window open for yourself as well as for your 
blackbird ; and make your shoes not to pinch. I present 
you, sir, with a copy of the book of the wise Switzer. 

And nimble Pillans, the clothier of the race, and quick 
as your needle, strong as your corduroys, I bid you good 
night. May you and the cooper be like him of Fogo, 
each a better man than his father ; and you, Mungo the 
mole-catcher, and Tod Laurie, and Sir Robert the cadger, 
and all the other odd people, I shake your fists twice, for 
I like your line. I often wish I had been a mole-catcher, 
with a brown velveteen, or (fine touch of tailoric fancy !) 
a moleskin coat, — not that I dislike moles, I once ate the 
fore-quarter of one, having stewed it in a Florence flask, 
some forty years ago, and liked it ; but I like the killing 
of them, and the country by-ways, and the regularly 
irregular life, and the importance of my trade. 

And good night to you all, you women folks. Marion 
Graham the milkwoman ; Tibbie Meek the single servant ; 
Jenny Muir the sempstress ; Mother Johnston the howdie, 
thou consequential Mrs. Gamp, presiding at the gates of 
life ; and you in the corner there, Nancy Cairns, gray- 
haired, meek and old, with your crimped mutch as white 
as snow ; the shepherd's widow, the now childless mother, 
you are stepping home to your bein and lonely room, 
where your cat is now ravelling a' her thrums, wonder- 
ing where " she " is. 

Good night to you all, big and little, young and old ; 
and go home to your bedside, there is Some One waiting 
there for you, and His Son is here ready to take you to 
Him. Yes, He is waiting for every one of you, and you 
have only to say, " Father, I have sinned, — make me " — 
and he sees you a great way off. But to reverse the 
parable ; it is the first-born, your elder brother, who is at 



212 HEALTH. 

your side, and leads you to your Father, and says, " I 
have paid his debt " ; that Son who is ever with Him, 
whose is all that He hath. 

I need not say more. You know what I mean. You 
know who is waiting, and you know who it is who stands 
beside you, having the likeness of the Son of Man. Good 
night ! The night cometh in which neither you nor I can 
work, — may we work while it is day ; whatsoever thy 
hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no 
work or device in the grave, whither we are all of us 
hastening ; and when the night is spent, may we all enter 
on a healthful, a happy, an everlasting to-morrow ! 




THE DUKE OF ATHOLE. 




THE DUKE OF ATHOLE. 




OME men have character, — more or less, — 
others have none, — and some few are charac- 
ters ; it is of their essence and what they are 
made of. Such was the late Duke of Athole ; 
he was a character, inscribed and graven by the cunning, 
inimitable, and unrepeating hand of Nature, — as original 
and as unmistakable as his own Ben-y-Gloe. 

He was a living, a strenuous protest, in perpetual kilt, 
against the civilization, the taming, the softening of man- 
kind. He was essentially wild. His virtues were those 
of human nature in the rough and unreclaimed, open and 
unsubdued as the Moor of Rannoch. He was a true au- 
tochthon, terrigena, — a son of the soil, — as rich in local 
color, as rough in the legs, and as hot at the heart, as 
prompt and hardy, as heathery as a gorcock.'^ Courage, 
endurance, stanchness, fidelity and warmth of heart, 
simplicity, and downrightness were his staples ; and with 
them he attained to a power in his own region and among 
his own people quite singular. The secret of this was 
his truth and his pluck, his kindliness and his constancy. 
Other noblemen put on the kilt at the season, and do their 
best to embrown their smooth knees for six weeks, return- 
ing then to trousers and to town ; he lived in his kilt all 



* The cock grouse. 



216 THE DUKE OF ATHOLE. 

tlie year long, and often slept soundly in it and his plaid 
among the brackens; and not sparing himself, he spared 
none of his men or friends, — it was the rigor of the game, 
— it was Devil take the hindmost. Up at all hours, out 
all day and all night, often without food, — with nothing 
but the unfailing pipe, — there he was, stalking the deer 
in Glen Tilt or across the Gaick moors, or rousing before 
daybreak the undaunted otter among the alders of the 
Earn, the Isla, or the Almond ; and if in his pursuit, 
which was fell as any hound's, he got his hand into the 
otter's grip, and had its keen teeth meeting in his palm, 
he let it have its will till the pack came up, — no flinch- 
ing, almost as if without the sense of pain. It was this 
gameness and thoroughness in whatever he was about 
that charmed his people, — charmed his very dogs ; and 
so it should.* 

There may be better pursuits for a man and a duke 
than otter-hunting, and crawling like a huge caterpillar 
for hours across bogs and rocks after a royal stag; but 
there may be worse ; and it is no small public good to 
keep up the relish for and the exercise of courage, perse- 
verance, readiness of mind and resource, hardihood, — it 
is an antidote against the softness and the luxury of a 
dainty world. 

But he was not only a great hunter, and an organizer 
and vitalizer of hunting, he was a great breeder. He 
lived at home, was himself a farmer, and knew all his 

* Many years ago, when Lord Glenlyon, he was riding in a hurdle 
race on the North Inch, when somehow his spectacles (he was very 
shortsighted) fell off, and in taking the first leap he and his horse fell 
heavily. Up he was and on again and away, winning in spite of his 
lost time, and taking his hurdles "like a lord." His right arm was 
observed to hang useless, and so it might, for he had broken his collar- 
bone. 



THE DUKE OF ATHOLE. 217 

farmers and all their men ; had lain out at night on the 
Badenoch heights with them, and sat in their bothies and 
smoked with them the familiar pipe. But he also was, 
as we have said, a thorough breeder, especially of Ayr- 
shire cattle. It was quite touching to see this fierce, rest- 
less, intense man — impiger, acer, iracundus — at the 
great Battersea show doating upon and doing everything 
for his meek-eyed, fine-limbed, sweet-breathed kine. It 
was the same with other stock, though the Ayrshires were 
his pets to the end. 

Then he revived and kept up the games of the coun- 
try, — the throwing the hammer, and casting the mighty 
caber ;^ the wild, almost naked, hillrace ; the Ghillie- 
Callum (sword-dance) and the study of the eldritch, mel- 
ancholy pipes, to which, we think, distance adds not a 
little enchantment ; all the natural fruits of human indus- 
try — the dyes, the webs, the hose — of the district. 
There might be much for Adam Smith and the Times to 
laugh at in all this, but it had and did its own good ; and 
it made him a living centre, — a king. And who that 
ever was there does not remember the wonderful ball that 
closed the Athole Gathering, when delicate London girls 
were endued with miraculous spunk, when reel succeeded 
reel like the waves of the sea, — all innocent, and all 
happy, and all light of heel, — and when the jocund morn, 
far up in heaven, saw them " doun by the Tummel and 
banks o' the Garry," or across into Lochaber by the grim 
Ben Aulder and utmost Dalnaspidal. 

Let no man speak evil of those cordial and once-a-year 
jovialities. They did no harm to those who brought no 
harm with them, and they left the memory of honest mirth 
— of health and youth — rejoicing after its last Reel of 

* A huge tree, requiring great strength and knack to pitch it. 
10 



218 THE DUKE OF ATHOLE. 

Tulloch or Houlachan, to immerse itself in the lovelmess 
of that nature which is the art of God, and go home to its 
bath, its breakfast, and its bed. 

Then the Duke was a great organizer of men, — he 
was martial to the core ; had his body-guard dressed and 
drilled to perfection, — all mighty men of valor, — after 
whom at the Princess's marriage the lively and minute 
Cockneys gazed in an awful wonder. 

Of all the men about him he was as much the friend as 
the master ; and this is saying much, as those who knew 
his peremptory nature can well confirm. This power 
over men, not from mere birth, — though he knew he was 
"to the manner born," — not by high intellect, or what is 
called knowledge, — for, though he had a stout and keen 
understanding, it was not high or cultured, — not because 
he was rich, which he never was, but simply because he 
was immediate, honest, and alive, — up to anything, and 
always with them. This power gave him a hold over all 
about him, which, had it not been something deeper and 
better, would have been almost ludicrous. His Athole 
guard (many of whom, with Struan at their head, were 
his peers in birth) would have died for him, not in word, 
but in deed ; and a young, capable shepherd, who might 
have pushed his fortune anywhere and to any length, was 
more than rewarded for living a solitary deer-keeper at 
the far-end of Glen Tilt, or up some to us nameless wild, 
where for months he saw no living thing but his dog and 
the deer, the eagles and the hill fox, the raven and the 
curlew, — by his £18 a year, his £3 for milk, his six 
bolls and a half of oatmeal, with his annual coat of gray 
tweed, his kilt and his hose, — so that he had the chance 
of a kind word or nod from the Duke, or, more blessed 
still, a friendly pipe with him in his hut, with a confiden- 
tial chat on the interests of the " Forest." 



THE DUKE OF ATHOLE. 219 

He was habitually and curiously good to all below him, 
unrelenting in his requisition of service, but far more gen- 
erous than just. He knew them every one, and all their 
interests and wants, and took his own odd but genuine 
ways of reaching their hearts and doing them good. 

Every one knows the interest our Queen had in him, 
in his Duchess and in Blair, — where she first saw and 
loved the Highlands, when she and her husband were in 
their first young joys, and where she went when her 
friend and her friend's husband, and her husband's friend, 
lay dying by inches of that terrible malady against which 
he bore himself so patiently, we may now say so sweetly, 
— submitting that fierce, restless spirit to the Awful Will, 
setting his house in order, seeing and comforting his 
friends, remembering his people, not even forgetting his 
Ayrshires, — why should he ? — waiting steadfastly and 
like a man for the end. We all know — it is our posses- 
sion — that meeting of the quick, honest, chivalrous, de- 
voted chieftain with his sorrow-laden but sympathizing 
Queen, — their mutual regards, their brief, measured 
words from the heart. The dying man rising from his 
final room and accompanying his Royal Mistress to the 
train, — kissing her hand, and bidding her, not without 
dignity, farewell ; and when his amazed and loving peo- 
ple stood, silent and awed, almost scared, by something 
greater than Majesty, — the presence of that Shade who 
is waiting for us all, and who " the likeness of a kingly 
crown has on," — as the Duke with his dying lips raised 
the parting cheer. Such a thing does a nation — does 
every one of us — good ; it is that touch of nature which 
makes us we all know what, and which we are in this fast 
world of ours all too little and too seldom. 

There must have been no ordinary worth in the man 



220 THE DUKE OP ATHOLE. 

whom the Queen so regarded and honored. Much of this 
honor he, in his simple-heartedness and his frank speech, 
would have returned to her, the admirable wife, who now 
mourns him, — who had nursed him day and night for 
months as few women could even if they would, — to 
whom he was glad at all times to say he owed every- 
thing ; and his marriage to whom he, in his blunt and 
strong way, said, at a dinner to him at Dunkeld some 
years ago, when the Duchess's health was drank, was the 
wisest thing he ever did. 

The Duke was by blood, inheritance, and education as 
pure a Tory as he allowed himself to be educated ; but 
he had none of the meannesses, the tortuosities, of your 
partisan Tory. He was a cordial Palmerstonian, as his 
presence and his speech at his Lordship's dinner testified. 
He knew who could drive the coach, and he booked him- 
self accordingly. Next to his deer, his Freemasonry and 
his belief in the Ayrshire breed, was his love for what he 
called Toryism ; but he was his own master in this as in 
everything, and his vote was at no man's bidding. Long 
will his well-known figure and gait, his hearty, ringing, 
shrill voice, his reckless daring, his unsparing energy, his 
hidden kindness, his genuine love of his hills and wilds 
and men, survive in his own noble region, where he lived 
and died as unsubdued by the hand of progress and city 
life, — as unhurt by luxury as Schehallion or Ben Doran ; 
for he was, as we at first said, a genuine character, with 
a look and a step, a set of his glengarry, an everything all 
his own, and a thoroughness, cordiality, and kindliness of 
nature all the more delightful and unforgetable that, like 
the honey in Samson's lion, it took us by surprise. 



STRU AN. 



STRUAN.=* 




NOTHER Highland chief of the old breed has 
been gathered to his fathers in the midst of his 
years. Struan Robertson — or, as he was best 
known, Struan^ not the Struan, the head of 
the clan Donachie, and representative of one of the oldest 
families in the North, who were Counts of Athole before 
the Murrays, and once owned land from the watershed of 
the Moor of Rannoch to within a mile of Perth, and were 
always " out " when anybody was, — was laid in his grave 
on Monday last, carried shoulder-high by his men and the 
stout shepherds of Rannoch, and lowered into his rest by 
his brother-officers of the Athole Guard. 

A more exquisite place is not in all the Perthshire 
Highlands, — of which it is the very heart, — a little 
wooded knoll near Dunalister, within whose lofty pines 
the shadow of death gently and forever broods, even at 
noon, over the few graves of the lords of the clan and 
their kin ; at its foot the wild Rannoch, now asleep, now 
chafing with the rocks ; and beyond, the noble Schiehal- 
lion, crowned, as it was on that day, with snow, and raked 
with its ov/n pathetic shroud-like mists. 

Though he was but occasionally in Edinburgh, Struan 
was better known than many men who never leave it ; 



From the " Scotsman" of April 18, 1864. 



224 STRUAN. 

and all felt proud of watching the manly, athletic, and 
agile chief, with his stern and Dowerful look as of an 
eagle, — 

" The terror of his beak, the lightning of his eye," — 

and his beard black as an Arab sheik's, as he strode 
along Princes Street in his decorous kilt of hodden gray, 
— for he detested the Cockney fopperies and curt gar- 
ments of what he called " Sabbath-day Hielandmen," — 
as if he were on the heather in his own " Black Wood." 
His last act before leaving this country for the South, to 
die, was to give his thin, trembling hand to lower his 
Duke and friend into the grave at Blair ; and as he came 
home he said, " I '11 be the next " ; and so he was. We 
may wait long before we see such a pair. 

Struan was in the Forty-Second when young. Had he 
remained in the army he would have made himself famous. 
He had a true military instinct, and was pre-eminently cool 
and inventive in emergencies. We remember well his 
sudden appearance at the great fire in Leith Street some 
six-and-twenty years ago, — as a stripling in Highland 
ball-dress, — with a company of his men whom he had 
led from the Castle ; how he took, as if by right, the com- 
mand of every one, and worked like Telamonian Ajax 
(who we are sure was like him) at the engines ; how 
the boys gloried in him, saying, " There 's young Struan ; 
he works like six ! " and so he did. He and his men got 
the thanks of the Town Council next day. But his life 
was spent in his own Rannoch and among his own peo- 
ple, taking part not only in all their sports and games and 
strenuous festivities, the life and soul of them all, but 
leading them also in better ways, — making roads and 
building for them schools and bridges. 



STRUAN. 225 

Like all true sportsmen, he was a naturalist, — studied 
Nature's ongoings and all her children with a keen, uner- 
ring, and loving eye, from her lichens and moths (for 
which Rannoch is famous) to her eagles, red deer, and 
salmo ferox ; and his stories, if recorded, would stand well 
side by side with Mr. St. John's. One we remember. 
He and his keeper were on a cloudless day in midwinter 
walking across the head of Loch Rannoch, which, being 
shallow, was frozen over. The keeper stopped, and, 
looking straight up into the clear sky, said to his master, 
" Do you see that ? " Keen as he was, Struan said, 
" What ? " " An eagle " ; and there, sure enough, was a 
mere speck in the far-off " azure depths of air." Duncan 
Roy flung a white hare he had shot along the ice, and 
instantly the speck darkened, and down came the mighty 
creature with a swoop, and not knowing of the ice, was 
" made a round flat dish of, with the head in the centre." 

For one thing Struan was remarkable, even among 
good shots ; he was the most humane sportsman we ever 
saw ; he never shot but he hit, and he never hit but he 
killed. No temptation made him wound and lose a bird 
or deer as so many do, — he was literally a dead shot. 
He used to say that once when a boy he found a poor 
bird lying in the heather ; he took it up, and it died in his 
hand, — he knew he had shot and lost it some days be- 
fore. He said that bird's dying eye haunted him for 
months ; and he made a covenant with himself that never 
again would his hand cause such long misery. 

We have said he was in the Forty-Second ; and his house, 
" Ranach Barracks," was the first rendezvous of that re- 
nowned corps, then known as the Black Watch. 

He was as courtly and mannerly, as gentle and full of 
chivalrous service, as he was strong, peremptory, and 

10* A 



226 STEUAN. 

hardy ; and any one seeing him with ladies or children 
or old people would agree with one half of King Jamie's 
Baying, " A' the 'sons " (men with names ending in son 
like Wilson, Nicholson, etc.) " are carles' sons, but Struan 
Robertson 's a gentleman's." Those who knew and mourn 
him can never hope to see any one like him again, with 
his abounding jokes and mirth, and his still more abound- 
ing hospitality and heart. 




THACKERAY'S DEATH. 



^ 



THACKERAY'S DEATH. 




HIS great writer — our greatest novelist since 
Scott, (and in some senses greater, because 
deeper, more to the quick, more naked than 
he,) our foremost wit and man of letters since 
Macaulay — has been taken from us with an awful un- 
expectedness. He was found dead in bed this morning. 
This is to us so great a personal as well as public calam- 
ity, that we feel little able to order our words aright or 
to see through our blinding tears. 

Mr. Thackeray was so much greater, so much nobler 
than his works, great and noble as they are, that it is 
difficult to speak of him without apparent excess. What 
a loss to the world the disappearance of that large, acute, 
and fine understanding ; that searching, inevitable inner 
and outer eye ; that keen and yet kindly satiric touch ; 
that wonderful humor and play of soul ! And then such a 
mastery of his mother tongue ! such a style ! such nicety 
of word and turn ! such a flavor of speech ! such genuine 
originality of genius and expression ! such an insight into 
the hidden springs of human action ! such a dissection of 
the nerves to their ultimate Jibrillce ! such a sense and 
such a sympathy for the worth and for the misery of man ! 
such a power of bringing human nature to its essence, — 
detecting at once its basic goodness and vileness, its com- 



230 THACKERAY'S DEATH. 

positeness ! In this subtle, spiritual analysis of men and 
women, as we see them and live with them ; in this pow- 
er of detecting the enduring passions and desires, the 
strengths, the weaknesses, and the deceits of the race, from 
under the mask of ordinary worldly and town life, — mak- 
ing a dandy or a dancing-girl as real, as " moving deli- 
cate and full of life," as the most heroic incarnations of 
good and evil ; in this vitality and yet lightness of hand- 
ling, doing it once and forever, and never a touch too 
little or too much, — in all these respects he stood and 
stands alone and matchless. He had a crystalline trans- 
lucency of thought and language ; there was no mistak- 
ing or missing his meaning. It was like the finest etch- 
ing, done with a needle and bitten in with the best aqua- 
fortis^ — the maniere incisive to perfection ; while, when 
needed, he could rise to the full diapason of passion and 
lofty declamation : and this was not the less striking from 
being rare and brief, like a flash of close lightning with 
its thunder quick and short. 

Besides his wit, his quiet, scrupulous, and unerring eye, 
his proper satiric gifts, his amazing faculty of making 
his men and women talk each in their own voice and 
tongue, so that you know them before they are named, 
Mr. Thackeray had, as the condition under which all 
these acted, a singularly truthful, strong, and roomy un- 
derstanding. There was an immense quantity, not less 
than the finest quality, of mind in everything he said. 
You felt this when with him and when you measured 
with your eye his enormous brain. 

His greatest work, one of the great masterpieces of 
genius in our, or indeed in any language, without doubt 
is Vanity Fair, 

This set him at once and by a bound in the first rank 



THACKERAY'S DEATH. 231 

of fiction. One returns again and again to it, with its 
freshness, its depth, and terrible truth and power, its 
easy yet exquisite characterization, its living talk, its 
abounding wit and fun. 

We remember how, at the dinner given to him many 
years ago here, the chairman, with equal felicity and 
truth, said that two of Mr. Thackeray's master powers 
were satire and sympathy ^ — for without both of them 
he would not have been all that he peculiarly was. 

It should never be forgotten that his specific gift 
was creative satire, — not caricature, nor even sarcasm, 
nor sentiment, nor romance, nor even character as 
such, — but the delicate satiric treatment of human 
nature in its most superficial aspects as well as in its 
inner depths, by a great-hearted, and tender and genuine 
sympathy, unsparing, truthful, inevitable, but with love 
and the love of goodness and true loving-kindness over- 
arching and indeed animating it all. It was well said by 
Brimley, in his subtle and just estimate of our great 
author in his Essays, that he could not have painted 
" Vanity Fair as he has, unless Eden had been shining in 
his inner eye." It was this sense of an all-perfect good, 
of a strict goodness laid upon each one of us as an unes- 
capable law, it was this glimpse into the Paradise, not 
lost, of the lovely and the pure, which quickened his fell 
insight into the vileness, the vanity, the shortcomings, 
the pitifulness of us all, of himself not less than of any 
son of time. But as we once heard him say, he was 
created with a sense of the ugly, of the odd, of the meanly 
false, the desperately wicked ; he laid them bare : them 
under all disguises he hunted to the death. And is not 
this something to have done? Something inestimable, 
though at times dreadful and sharp ? It purges the soul 
by terror and pity. 



232 THACKERAY'S DEATH. 

This, with his truthfulness, his scorn of exaggeration in 
thought or word, and his wide, deep, living sympathy for 
the entire round of human wants and miseries, goes far 
to make his works in the best, because a practical sense, 
wholesome, moral, honest, and of " good report" 

It is needless to enumerate his works. We not only 
all know and possess them, — thej possess us; for are not 
Becky Sharp, Colonel Newcome, Major Pendennis, the 
Little Sister and Jeames, the O'Mulligan, and the terrific 
Deuceace, more really existing and alive in our minds 
than many men and women we saw yesterday ? 

Mr. Thackeray had, we believe, all but, if not entirely, 
finished a novel which was to appear in the Gornhill next 
spring. It will be a sad pleasure to read the last words 
of the great genius and artist to whom we owe so much 
of our best entertainment. 

He had a genuine gift of drawing. The delicious 
Book of Snobs is poor without his own woodcuts ; 
and he not only had the eye and the faculty of a 
draughtsman, he was one of the best of art critics. He 
had the true instinct and relish, and the nicety and 
directness, necessary for just as well as high criticism : 
the white light of his intellect found its way into this 
as into every region of his work. We should not for- 
get his verses, — he would have laughed if they had 
been called poems ; but they have more imaginative visy 
more daintiness of phrase, more true sensibility and 
sense, than much that is called so both by its authors and 
the public. We all know the abounding fun and drollery 
of his " Battle of Limerick," the sweet humor and rustic 
Irish loveliness of " Peg of Limavaddy," and the glorified 
cockneyism of "Jacob Omnium's 'Oss." "The Ballad 
of Eliza Davis," and the joys and woes of " Pleaceman 



THACKERAY'S DEATH. 233 

X," we all know; but not so many know the pathetic 
depth, the dreamy, unforgetting tenderness, of the "Ballad 
of Bouillabaisse," " The White Squall," and " The End 
of the Play," — the last written, strangely as it now 
reads, for Christmas, 1848, this day fifteen years ago. 
From it we take the following mournful and exquisite 
lines : — 

"I'd say we suffer and we strive 

Not less nor more as men than boys, 
With grizzled beards at forty-five 
As erst at twelve in corduroys ; 
And if in time of sacred truth 

We learned at home to love and pray, 
Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth 
May never wholly pass away. 

" And in the world as in the school 

I 'd say how fate may change and shift, 
The prize be sometimes with the fool, 

The race not always to the swift. 
The strong may yield, the good may fall, 

The great man be a vulgar clown, 
The knave be lifted over all, 

The kind cast pitilessly down. 

** We bow to Heaven that willed it so, 
That darkly rules the fate of all ; 
That sends the respite or the blow, 
That 's free to give or to recall. 

" So each shall mourn, in life's advance, 

Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed, 
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance 

And longing passion unfulfilled. 
Amen whatever fate be sent, 

Pray God the heart may kindly glow, 
Although the head with cares be bent, 

And whitened with the winter snow. 

• Come wealth or want, come good or ill, 
Let young and old accept their part, 



234 THACKERAY'S DEATH. 

And bow before the awful will, 
And bear it with an honest heart. 

* My song save this is little worth, 

I lay the weary pen aside, 
And wish you health and love and mirth, 

As fits the solemn Christmas tide. 
As fits the holy Christmas birth, 

Be this, good friends, our carol still, 
Be peace on earth, be peace on earth. 

To men of gentle will." 

Gentle and sacred as these words are, they are as much 
an essential part of their author's nature as that super- 
fluity of naughtiness, the Marquis of Steyne, in " Vanity 
Fair," or the elder and truly infernal Deuceace, or the 
drunken and savage parson, in " Philip." It was no or- 
dinary instrument which embraced so much, and no 
ordinary master who could so sound its chords. 

Mr. Thackeray had a warm heart to Edinburgh. It 
was here he took courage from the cordial, appreciative 
reception he got when he lectured here, and he always 
returned to us with renewed relish. Many of us will 
now think over with a new and deeper interest — the in- 
terest of the sudden grave and the irrevocable and im- 
perishable past — on those pleasant times when he read 
his " Wit and Humor " and his " Curate's Walk," and, 
with a solemn tenderness, simplicity, and perfectness, such 
as it is now hopeless ever again to hear, read to us " The 
spacious firmament on high," and Johnson's noble and 
touching lines on poor Levett. 

We know of no death in the world of letters since 
Macaulay's which will make so many mourners, — for he 
was a faithful friend. No one, we believe, will ever 
know the amount of true kindness and help, given often 
at a time when kindness cost much, to nameless, unheard- 



THACKERAY'S DEATH. 235 

of suffering. A man of spotless honor, of the strongest 
possible home affections, of the most scrupulous truthful- 
ness of observation and of word, we may use for him his 
own words to his " faithful old gold pen " : — 

" Nor pass the words as idle phrases by; 
Stranger ! I never writ a flattery, 
Nor signed the page that registered a lie." 

He has joined the immortals ; for we may say of him, 
what we can say of few, — he is already and forever 
classic. He is beyond the fear of forgetfulness or change, 
for he has enshrined his genius in a style crystalline, 
strong, beautiful, and enduring. There was much of 
many great men in him, — of Montaigne, Le Sage, Swift, 
and Addison, of Steele and Goldsmith, of Fielding, Mo- 
liere, and Charles Lamb ; but there was more of himself 
than of all others. As a work of art, his '' Esmond " is 
probably the most consummate : it is a curious tour de 
force, — a miracle, not only of story-telHng, but of archaic 
insight and skill. 




THACKERAY'S LITERARY 
CAREER. 




THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER.* 




IHAT Mr. Thackeray was born in India in 
1811 ; that he was educated at Charter House 
and Cambridge ; that he left the University 
after a few terms' residence without a degree ; 
that he devoted himself at first to art ; that in pursuit 
thereof he lived much abroad " for study, for sport, for so- 
ciety " ; that about the age of twenty -five, married, with- 
out fortune, without a profession, he began the career 
which has made him an English classic ; that he pursued 
that career steadily till his death, — all this has, within the 
last few weeks, been told again and again. 

It is a common saying that the lives of men of letters 
are uneventful. In an obvious sense this is true. They 
are seldom called on to take part in events which move 
the world, in politics, in the conflicts of nations; while 
the exciting incidents of sensation-novels are as rare in 
their lives as in the lives of other men. But men of 
letters are in no way exempt from the changes and chan- 
ces of fortune ; and the story of these, and of the effects 
which came from them, must possess an interest for all 
Prosperity succeeded by cruel reverses ; happiness, and 
the long prospect of it, suddenly clouded ; a hard fight, 

* The larger and better part of this paper is by my young and 
accomplished friend Henry H. Lancaster, Advocate, — J. B. 



240 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

with aims as yet uncertain, and powers unknown ; success 
bravely won ; the austerer victory of failure manfully 
borne, — these things make a life truly eventful, and make 
the story of that life full of interest and instruction. 
They will all fall to be narrated when Mr. Thackeray's 
life shall be written ; we have only now to do with them 
so far as they illustrate his literary career, of which we 
propose to lay before our readers an account as., complete 
as is in our power, and as impartial as our warm ad- 
miration for the great writer we have lost will allow. 

Many readers know Mr. Thackeray only as the Thack- 
eray of Vanity Fair^ Pendennis^ The Newcomes^ and The 
Virginians, the quadrilateral of his fame, as they were 
called by the writer of an able and kindly notice in the 
Illustrated News, The four volumes of Miscellanies pub- 
lished in 1857, though his reputation had been then es- 
tablished, are less known than they should be. But Mr. 
Thackeray wrote much which does not appear even in 
the Miscellanies ; and some account of his early labors 
may not be unacceptable to our readers. 

His first attempt was ambitious. He became con- 
nected as editor, and also, we suspect, in some measure, 
as proprietor, with a weekly literary journal, the for- 
tunes of which were not prosperous. We believe the 
journal to have been one which bore the imposing title 
of " The National Standard and Journal of Literature, 
Science, Music, Theatricals, and the Fine Arts." Thack- 
eray's editorial reign began about the 19th Number, 
after which he seems to have done a good deal of 
work, — reviews, letters, criticisms, and verses. As the 
National Standard is now hardly to be met with out 
of the British Museum, we give a few specimens of 
these first efforts. There is a mock sonnet by W. Words- 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 241 

worth, illustrative of a drawing of Braham in stage 
nautical costume, standing by a theatrical sea-shore ; 
in the background an Israelite, with the clothes-bag 
and triple hat of his ancient race; and in the sky, 
constellation-wise, appears a Jew's harp, with a chaplet 
of bays round it. The sonnet runs : — 

Say not that Judah's harp hath lost its tone, 

Or that no bard hath found it where it hung 

Broken and lonely, voiceless and unstrung, 

Beside the sluggish streams of Babylon : 

Slowman * repeats the strain his fathers sung, 

And Judah's burning lyre is Braham's own! 

Behold him here ! Here view the wondrous man, 

Majestical and lonely, as when first, 

In music on a wondering world he burst, 

And charmed the ravished ears of Sov'reign Anne.f 

Mark well the form, reader ! nor deride 

The sacred symbol — Jew's harp glorified — 

Which, circled with a blooming wreath, is seen 

Of verdant bays ; and thus are typified 

The pleasant music, and the baize of green. 

Whence issues out at eve Braham with front serene." 

We have here the germ of a style in which Thack- 
eray became famous, though the humor of attributing 
this nonsense to Wordsworth, and of making Braham 
coeval with Queen Anne, is not now very plain. There 
is a yet more characteristic touch in a review of Mont- 
gomery's " Woman the Angel of Life," winding up with 
a quotation of some dozen lines, the order of which he 

says has been reversed by the printer, but as they read 
I 

* " It is needless to speak of the eminent vocalist and improvisatore. 
He nightly delights a numerous and respectable audience at the Cider 
Cellar; and while on this subject, I cannot refrain from mentioning the 
kindness of Mr. Evans, the worthy proprietor of that establishment. 
N. B. — A table d'hote every Friday. — W. Wordsworth." 

t '' Mr. Braham made his first appearance in England in the reign 
of Queen Anne — W. W.'» 

11 p 



242 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

quite as well the one way as the other, he does not think 
it worth while to correct the mistake ! A comical tale, 
called the " Devil's Wager," afterwards reprinted in the 
Paris Sketch-Book, also appeared in the National Stand- 
ard, with a capital woodcut, representing the Devil as 
sailing through the air, dragging after him the fat Sir 
Roger de Rollo by means of his tail, which is w^ound 
round Sir Roger's neck. The idea of this tale is charac- 
teristic. The venerable knight, already in the other 
world, has made a foolish bet with the Devil involving 
very seriously his future prospects there, which he can 
only win by persuading some of his relatives on earth to 
say an Ave for him. He fails to obtain this slight boon 
from a kinsman successor for obvious reasons ; and from 
a beloved niece, owing to a musical lover whose sere- 
nading quite puts a stop to her devotional exercises ; and 
succeeds at last, only when, giving up all hope from com- 
passion or generosity, he appeals by a pious fraud to the 
selfishness of a brother and a monk. The story ends 
with a very Thackerean touch : " The moral of this 
story will be given in several successive numbers " ; the 
last three words are in the Sketch-Book changed into 
" the second edition." 

Perhaps best of all is a portrait of Louis Philippe, pre- 
senting the Citizen King under the Robert Macaire as- 
pect, the adoption and popularity of which Thackeray so 
carefully explains and illustrates in his Essay on " Cari- 
catures and Lithography in Paris." Below the portrait 
are these lines, not themselves very remarkable, but in 
which, especially in the allusion to Snobs by the destined 
enemy of the race, we catch glimpses of the future : — 

" Like * the king in the parlor ' he 's fumbling his money, 
Like ' the queen in the kitchen * his speech is all honey, 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 243 

Except .when he talks it, like Emperor Nap, 
Of his wonderful feats at Flenrus and Jemappe ; 
Bnt alas ! all his zeal for the multitude 's gone. 
And of no numbers thinking except Number One ! 
No huzzas greet his coming, no patriot club licks 
The hand of * the best of created republics ' : 
He stands in Paris, as you see him before ye, 
Little more than a snob. That 's an end of the story.'* 

The journal seems to have been an attempt to substi- 
tute vigorous and honest criticism of books and of art for 
the partiality and slipslop general then, and now not per- 
haps quite unknown. It failed, however, partly, it may 
be, from the inexperience of its managers, but doubtless 
still more from the want of the capital necessary to estab- 
lish anything of the sort in the face of similar journals of 
old standing. People get into a habit of taking certain 
periodicals unconsciously, as they take snuff. The Na- 
tional Standard, etc., etc., came into existence on the 5th 
January, 1833, and ceased to be on the 1st February, 
1834. 

His subsequent writings contain several allusions to 
this misadventure ; from some of which we would infer 
that the breakdown of the journal was attended with cir- 
cumstances more unpleasant than mere literary failure. 
Mr. Adolphus Simcoe^ {Punch, Vol. IIL)j when in a bad 
way from a love of literature and drink, completed his 
ruin by purchasing and conducting for six months that 
celebrated miscellany called the Lady's Lute, after which 

* The portrait of Mr. Adolphus, stretched out, " careless diffused," — 
seedy, hungry, and diabolical, in his fashionable cheap hat, his dirty 
white duck trousers strapped tightly down, as being the mode and 
possibly to conceal his bare legs; a half-smoked, probably unsmoke- 
ably bad cigar, in his hand, which is lying over the arm of a tavern 
bench, from whence he is casting a greedy and ruffian eye upon some 
unseen fellows, supping plenteously and with cheer, — is, for power 
and drawing, not unworthy of Hogarth. 



244 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

time "its chords were rudely snapped asunder, and he 
who had swept them aside with such joy went forth a 
wretched and heart-broken man." And in Lovel the 
Widower^ Mr. Batchelor narrates similar experiences : — 

" I dare say I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded 
Museum^ and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse 
morality and sound literature throughout the nation, and to 
pocket a liberal salary in return for my services. I dare say 
I printed my own sonnets, my own tragedy, my own verses 
(to a being who shall be nameless, but whose conduct has 
caused a faithful heart to bleed not a little). I dare say I 
wrote satirical articles, in which I piqued myself on the fine- 
ness of my wit and criticisms, got up for the nonce, out of en- 
cyclopaedias and biographical dictionaries ; so that I would be 
actually astonished at my own knowledge. I dare say I made 
a gaby of myself to the world ; pray, my good friend, hast 
thou never done likewise ? If thou hast never been a fool, 
be sure thou wilt never be a wise man." 

Silence for a while seems to have followed upon this 
failure ; but in 1836 his first attempt at independent au- 
thorship appeared simultaneously at London and Paris. 
This publication, at a time when he still hoped to make 
his bread by art, is, like indeed everything he either said 
or did, so characteristic, and has been so utterly forgot- 
ten, that an account of it may not be out of place, perhaps 
more minute than its absolute merits deserve. 

It is a small folio, with six lithographs, slightly tinted, 
entitled Flore et Zephyr^ Ballet Mythologique dedie a — 
par Theophile Wagstaffe. Between " a " and ''par " on 
the cover is the exquisite Flore herself, all alone in some 
rosy and bedizened bower. She has the old jaded smirk, 
and, with eyebrows up and eyelids dropt, she is looking 
down oppressed with modesty and glory. Her nose, 
which is long, and has a ripe droop, gives to the semicir- 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 245 

cular smirk of the large mouth, down upon the centre of 
which it comes in the funniest way, an indescribably sen- 
timental absurdity. Her thin, sinewy arms and large 
hands are crossed on her breast, and her petticoat stands 
out like an inverted white tulip — of muslin — out of 
which come her professional legs, in the only position 
which human nature never puts its legs into ; it is her 
special pose. Of course, also, you are aware, by that 
smirk, that look of being looked at, that though alone in 
maiden meditation in this her bower, and sighing for her 
Zephyr, she is in front of some thousand pairs of eyes, 
and under the fire of many double-barrelled lorgnettes, 
of which she is the focus. 

In the first plate. La Dansefait ses offrandes sur Vautel 
de Vharmonie^ in the shapes of Flore and Zephyr coming 
trippingly to the footlights, and paying no manner of 
regard to the altar of harmony, represented by a fiddle 
with an old and dreary face, and a laurel-wreath on its 
head, and very great regard to the unseen but perfectly 
understood " house." Next is Triste et abattUj les seduc- 
tions des Nymphes le (^Zephyr) tentent en vain, Zephyr 
looking theatrically sad. Then Flore (with one lower 
extremity at more than a right angle to the other) deplore 
Vahsence de Zephyr, The man in the orchestra endeavor- 
ing to combine business with pleasure, so as to play the 
flageolet and read his score, and at the same time miss 
nothing of the deploring, is intensely comic. Next Zephyr 
has his turn, and dans un pas seul exprime sa supreme 
desespoir, — the extremity of despair being expressed by 
doubhng one leg so as to touch the knee of the other, and 
then whirling round so as to suggest the regulator of a 
steam-engine run off. Next is the rapturous reconcilia- 
tion, when the faithful creature bounds into his arms, and 



246 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

is held up to the house by the waist in the wonted fashion. 
Then there is La Retraite de Flore, where we find her 
with her mother and two admirers, — Zephyr, of course, 
not one. This is in Thackeray's strong, unflinching line. 
One lover is a young dandy without forehead or chin, sit- 
ting idiotically astride his chair. To him the old lady, 
who has her slight rouge, too, and is in a homely shawl 
and muff, having walked, is making faded love. In the 
centre is the fair darling herself still on tiptoe, and wrap- 
ped up, but not too much, for h^r Jiacre, With his back 
to the comfortable fire, and staring wickedly at her, is the 
other lover, a big, burly, elderly man, probably well to do 
on the Bourse, and with a wife and family at home in 
their beds. The last exhibits Les delassements de Zephyr, 
That hard-working and homely personage is resting his 
arm on the chimney-piece, taking a huge pinch of snuff 
from the box of a friend, with a refreshing expression of 
satisfaction, the only bit of nature as yet* A dear little 
innocent pot-boy, such as only Thackeray knew how to 
draw, is gazing and waiting upon the two, holding up a 
tray from the nearest tavern, on which is a great pewter- 
pot of foaming porter for Zephyr, and a rummer of steam- 
ing brandy and water for his friend, who has come in 
from the cold air. These drawings are lithographed by 
Edward Morton, son of "Speed the Plough," and are 
done with that delicate strength and truth for which this 
excellent but little known artist is always to be praised. 
In each corner is the monogram "Sk/^ which appears so 

often afterwards with the M added, and is itself super- 
seded by the well-known pair of spectacles. Thackeray 
must have been barely five-and-twenty when this was 
published by Mitchell in Bond Street. It can hardly be 
said to have sold. 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 247 

Now it is worth noticing how in this, as aiways, he 
ridiculed the ugly and the absurd in truth and pureness. 
There is, as we may well know, much that is wicked 
(though not so much as the judging community are apt to 
think) and miserable in such a life. There is much that 
a young man and artist might have felt and drawn in de- 
picting it, of which in after years he would be ashamed ; 
but " Theophile Wagstaflfe " has done nothing of this. 
The effect of looking over these juvenilia — these first 
shafts from that mighty bow, now, alas ! unbent — is 
good, is moral ; you are sorry for the hard-wrought 
slaves ; perhaps a little contemptuous towards the idle 
people who go to see them ; and you feel, moreover, that 
the Ballet, as thus done, is ugly as well as bad, is stupid 
as well as destructive of decency. 

His dream of editorship being ended, Mr. Thackeray 
thenceforward contented himself with the more lowly, but 
less responsible, position of a contributor, especially to 
Fraser's Magazine. The youth of Fraser was full of 
vigor and genius. We know no better reading than its 
early volumes, unsparing indeed, but brilliant with schol- 
arship and originality and fire. In these days, the staff 
of that periodical included such men as Maginn, " Barry 
Cornwall," Coleridge, Carlyle, Hogg, Gait, Theodore 
Hook, Delta, Gleig, Edward Irving, and, now among the 
greatest of them all, Thackeray. The first of the Yellow- 
plush Correspondence appeared in November, 1837. The 
world should be grateful to Mr. John Henry Skelton, 
who in that year wrote a book called My Book, or the 
Anatomy of Conduct, for to him is owing the existence 
of Mr. Charles Yellowplush as a critic, and as a narrator 
of "fashnable fax and polite annygoats." Mr. Yellow- 
plush, on reading Mr. Skelton's book, saw at once that 



248 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

only a gentleman of his distinguished profession could 
competently criticise the same ; and this was soon suc- 
ceeded by the wider conviction that the great subject of 
fashionable life should not be left to any " common writin 
creatures/' but that an authentic picture thereof must be 
supplied by " one of us." In the words of a note to the 
first paper, with the initials 0. Y., but which it is easy to 
recognize as the work of Mr. Charles himself without the 
plush : " He who looketh from a tower sees more of the 
battle than the knights and captains engaged in it ; and, 
in like manner, he who stands behind a fashionable table 
knows more of society than the guests who sit at the 
board. It is from this source that our great novel-writers 
have drawn their experience, retailing the truths which 
they learned. It is not impossible that Mr. Yellowplush 
may continue his communications, when we shall be able 
to present the reader with the only authentic picture of 
fashionable life which has been given to the world in our 
time." The idea was not carried out very fully. The 
only pictures sketched by Mr. Yellowplush were the farce 
of " Miss Shum's Husband " and the terrible tragedy of 
" Deuceace," neither of them exactly " pictures of fash- 
ionable life." We rather fancy that, in the story of Mr^ 
Deuceace, Mr. Yellowplush was carried away from his 
original plan, a return to which he found impossible after 
that wonderful medley of rascality, grim humor, and un- 
relieved bedevilry of all kinds. But in 1838 he reverted 
to his original critical tendencies, and demolished all that 
The Quarterly had left of a book which made some 
noise in its day, called A Diary Illustrative of the Times 
of George the Fourth ; and wrote from his pantry one of 
the " Epistles to the Literati," expressing his views of 
Sir Edward Lytton's Sea Captain^ than which we know 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 249 

of no more good-natured, trenchant, and conclusive piece 
of criticism. All the Yellowplush papers except the first 
are republished in the Miscellanies. 

In 1839 appeared the story of Catherine, by Ikey Sol- 
omon. This story is little known, and it throws us back 
upon one still less known. In 1832, when Mr. Thackeray 
was not more than twenty-one, Elisabeth Brownrigge : a 
Tale, was narrated in the August and September numbers 
of Fraser. This tale is dedicated to the author of Eugene 
Aram, and the author describes himself as a young man 
who has for a length of time applied himself to literature, 
but entirely failed in deriving any emoluments from his 
exertions. Depressed by failure he sends for the popular 
novel of Eugene Aram to gain instruction therefrom. He 
soon discovers his mistake : — 

" From the frequent perusal of older works of imagination 
I had learnt so to weave the incidents of my story as to inter- 
est the feelings of the reader in favor of virtue, and to increase 
his detestation of vice. I have been taught by Eugene Aram 
to mix vice and virtue up together in such an inextricable 
confusion as to render it impossible that any preference should 
be given to either, or that the one, indeed, should be at all 

distinguishable from the other In taking my subject 

from that walk of life to which you had directed my attention, 
many motives conspired to fix my choice on the heroine of the 
ensuing tale ; she is a classic personage, — her name has been 
already ' Hnked to immortal verse ' by the muse of Canning. 
Besides, it is extraordinary that, as you had commenced a 
tragedy under the title of Eugene Aram^ I had already 
sketched a burletta with the title of Elisabeth Brownrigge. I 
had, indeed, in my dramatic piece, been guilty of an egregious 
and unpardonable error : I had attempted to excite the sym- 
pathies of the audience in favor of the murdered apprentices, 
but your novel has disabused me of so vulgar a prejudice, and, 
in my present version of her case, all the interest of the reader 
11* 



250 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

and all the pathetic powers of the author will be engaged on 
the side of the murderess." 

According to this conception the tale proceeds, with in- 
cidents and even names taken directly from the Newgate 
Calendar^ but rivalling Eugene Aram itself in magnifi- 
cence of diction, absurdity of sentiment, and pomp of 
Greek quotation. The trial scene and the speech for the 
defence are especially well hit off. If Elisabeth Brown- 
rigge was written by Thackeray, and the internal evi- 
dence seems to us strong, the following is surprising crit- 
icism from a youth of twenty-one, — the very Byron and 
Bulwer age : — 

" I am incHned to regard you (the author of Eugene Aram) 
as an original discoverer in the world of literary enterprise, 
and to reverence you as the father of a new * lusus natures 
school.' There is no other title by which your manner could 
be so aptly designated. I am told, for instance, that in a for- 
mer work, having to paint an adulterer, you described him as 
belonging to the class of country curates, among whom, per- 
haps, such a criminal is not met with once in a hundred years ; 
while, on the contrary, being in search of a tender-hearted, 
generous, sentimental, high-minded hero of romance, you 
turned to the pages of the Newgate Calendar, and looked for 
him in the hst of men who have cut throats for money, among 
whom a person in possession of such qualities could never have 
been met with at all. Wanting a shrewd, selfish, worldly, 
calculating valet, you describe him as an old soldier, though 
he bears not a single trait of the character which might have 
been moulded by a long course of military service, but, on the 
contrary, is marked by all the distinguishing features of a 
bankrupt attorney, or a lame duck firom the Stock Exchange. 
Having to paint a cat, you endow her with the idiosyncrasies 
of a dog." 

At the end, the author intimates that he is ready to 
treat with any liberal publisher for a series of works in 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 251 

the same style, to be called Tales of the Old Bailey, or 
Romances of Tyhurn Tree, Tlie proposed series is rep- 
resented only by Catherine, a longer and more elaborate 
effort in the same direction. It is the narrative of the 
misdeeds of Mrs. Catherine Hayes, — an allusion to whose 
criminality in after days brought down upon the author 
of Pendennis an amusing outpouring of fury from Irish 
patriotism, forgetting in its excitement that the name was 
borne by a heroine of the Newgate Calendar, as well as 
by the accomplished singer whom we all regret. The 
purpose of Catherine is the same as that of Elisabeth 
Brownrigge, — to explode the lusus naturce school ; but 
the plan adopted is slightly different. Things had got 
worse than they were in 1832. The pubhc had called 
for coarse stimulants and had got them. Jack Sheppard 
had been acquiring great popularity in Bentley's Miscel- 
lany ; and the true feeling and pathos of many parts of 
Oliver Twist had been marred by the unnatural senti- 
mentalism of Nancy. Mr. Ikey Solomon objected utterly 
to these monstrosities of literature, and thought the only 
cure was a touch of realism ; an attempt to represent 
blackguards in some measure as they actually are : — 

" In this," he says, " we have consulted nature and history 
rather than the prevailing taste and the general manner of 
authors. The amusing novel of Ernest Maltravers, for in- 
stance, opens with a seduction ; but then it is performed by 
people of the strictest virtue on both sides ; and there is so 
much religion and philosophy in the heart of the seducer, so 
much tender innocence in the soul of the seduced, that — bless 
the little dears ! — their very peccadilloes make one interested 
in them ; and their naughtiness becomes quite sacred, so deli- 
ciously is it described. Now, if we are to be interested by 
rascally actions, let us have them with plain faces, and let them 
be performed, not by virtuous philosophers, but by rascals. 



252 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

Another clever class of novelists adopt the contrary system, and 
create interest by making their rascals perform virtuous ac- 
tions. Against these popular plans we here solemnly appeal. 
We say, let your rogues in novels act like rogues, and your 
honest men like honest men ; don't let us have any juggling 
and thimblerigging with virtue and vice, so that, at the end 
of three volumes, the bewildered reader shall not know which 
is which ; don't let us find ourselves kindling at the generous 
qualities of thieves and sympathizing with the rascalities of 
noble hearts. For our own part, we know what the public 
likes, and have chosen rogues for our characters, and have 
taken a story from the Newgate Calendar^ which we hope to 
follow out to edification. Among the rogues at least, we will 
have nothing that shall be mistaken for virtue. And if the 
British public (after calling for three or four editions) shall 
give up, not only our rascals, but the rascals of all other authors, 
— we shall be content. We shall apply to government for a 
pension, and think that our duty is done." 

Again, further on in the same story : — 

" The public will hear of nothing but rogues ; and the only 
way in which poor authors, who must live, can act honestly by 
the public and themselves, is to paint such thieves as they are ; 
not dandy, poetical, rose-water thieves, but real downright 
scoundrels, leading scoundrelly Hves, drunken, profligate, dis- 
solute, low, as scoundrels will be. They don't quote Plato like 
Eugene Aram, or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest 
ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin ; or prate eter- 
nally about TO Kokov^ like that precious canting Maltravers, 
whom we all of us have read about and pitied ; or die white- 
washed saints, like poor Biss Dadsy, in Oliver Twist, No, my 
dear madam, you and your daughters have no right to admire 
and sympathize with any such persons, fictitious or real : you 
ought to be made cordially to detest, scorn, loathe, abhor, and 
abominate all people of this kidney. Men of genius, like those 
whose works we have above alluded to, have no business to 
make these characters interesting or agreeable, to be feeding 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 253 

your morbid fancies, or indulging their own with such mon- 
strous food. For our parts, young ladies, we beg you to bottle 
up your tears, and not waste a single drop of them on any one 
of the heroes or heroines in this history ; they are all rascals, 
every soul of them, and behave * as sich.' Keep your sym- 
pathy for those who deserve it ; don't carry it, for preference, 
to the Old Bailey, and grow maudlin over the company as- 
sembled there." 

Neither of these tales, though it is very curious to look 
back at them now, can be considered quite successful. 
And the reason of this is not hard to find. It was impos- 
sible that they could be attractive as stories ; while, on 
the other hand, the humor was not broad enough to com- 
mand attention for itself. They were neither sufficiently 
interesting nor sufficiently amusing. They are carica- 
tures without the element of caricature. In Elisabeth^ we 
have little but the story of a crime committed by a crim- 
inal actuated by motives and overflowing with sentiments 
of the Eugene Aram type. Catherine is more ambitious. 
In it an attempt is made to construct a story, — to de- 
lineate character. The rival loves of Mr. Bullock and 
Mr. Hayes, and the adventures of the latter on his mar- 
riage-day, show, to some extent, the future novelist ; 
while in the pictures of the manners of the times, slight 
though they are, in the characters of Corporal Brock and 
Cornet Galgenstein, and M. TAbbe O'Flaherty, we can 
trace, or at least we now fancy we can trace, the author 
of Barry Lyndon and Henry Esmond, Catherine herself, 
in her gradual progress from the village jilt to a mur- 
deress, is the most striking thing in the story, and is a 
sketch of remarkable power. But nothing could make a 
story interesting which consists of little more than the 
seduction of a girl, the intrigues of a mistress, the discon 



254 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

tent of a wife growing into hatred and ending in murder. 
At the close, indeed, the writer resorts to the true way 
of making such 2ijeu d' esprit attractive, — - burlesque. He 
concludes, though too late altogether to save the piece, in 
a blaze of theatrical blue-fire ; and it was this idea of 
burlesque or extravagant caricature which led to the per- 
fected successes of George de Barnwell and Codhngsby. 
In a literary point of view, it is well worth while to go 
back upon those early efforts ; and we have dwelt upon 
them the more williugly that their purpose and the liter- 
ary doctrine they contend for would be well remembered 
at this very time. We have given up writing about dis- 
covered criminals, only to write more about criminals not 
yet found out ; the lusus naturce school has given place 
to the sensational ; the literature of the Newgate Calen- 
dar has been supplanted by the literature of the detective 
officer, — a style rather the worse and decidedly the more 
stupid of the two. The republication of Catherine might 
be a useful, and would be a not unpleasing specific in the 
present diseased state of literary taste. We have said 
that the hand of the master is traceable in the characters 
of this tale. We have also a good example of what was 
always a marked peculiarity, both in his narrative writ- 
ing and in his representations of composite natures, what 
some one has called his "sudden pathos," an effect of 
natural and unexpected contrast always deeply poetical in 
feeling, such as the love of Barry Lyndon for his son, the 
association of a murderess eying her victim, with images 
of beauty and happiness and peace. We quote the pas- 
sage, although, as is always the case with the best things 
of the best writers, it suffers greatly by separation from 
the context, the force of the contrast being almost en- 
tirely lost : — 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 255 

" Mrs. Hayes sat up in the bed sternly regarding her hus- 
band. There is, be sure, a strong magnetic influence in wake- 
ful eyes so examining a sleeping person ; do not you, as a boy, 
remember waking of bright summer mornings and finding your 
mother looking over you ? had not the gaze of her tender 
eyes stolen into your senses long before you woke, and cast 
over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and love, 
and fresh-springing joy ? " 

In 1840 the Shabby Genteel Story appeared in Fraser^ 
which broke off sorrowfully enough, as w^e are told, " at a 
sad period of the writer's own life," to be afterwards taken 
up in The Adventures of Philip, The story is not a 
pleasant one, nor can we read it without pain, although 
we know that the after fortunes of the Little Sistur are 
not altogether unhappy. But it shows clear indications 
of growing power and range ; Brandon, Tufthunt, the 
Gann family, and Lord Cinqbars, can fairly claim the 
dignity of ancestors. Tlie Great Hoggarty Diamond 
came in 1841. This tale w^a< always, we are informed in 
the preface to a separate edition in 1849, a great favorite 
with the author, — a judgment, however, in which at first 
he stood almost alone. It was refused by one magazine 
before it found a place in Fraser ; and when it did appear 
it was little esteemed, or, indeed, noticed in any way. 
The late Mr. John Sterling took a different view, and 
wrote Mr. Thackeray a letter which " at that time gave 
me great comfort and pleasure." Few will now venture 
to express doubts of Mr. Sterling's discernment. But in 
reality we suspect that this story is not very popular. It 
is said to want humor and power ; but, on the other hand, 
in its beauty of pathos and tenderness of feeling, quite in- 
describable, it reaches a higher point of art than any of 
the minor tales ; and these Qualities have gained for it 



256 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

admirers very enthusiastic if not numerous. Fraser for 
June of the same year has a most enjoyable paper called 
" Memorials of Gormandizing," in which occurs the well- 
known adaptation of the " Persicos Odi," — " Dear Lucy, 
you know what my wish is " ; a paper better than any- 
thing in the " Original," better because simpler than Hay- 
ward's Art of Dining^ and which should certainly be 
restored to a dinner-eating world. To say nothing of its 
quiet humor and comical earnestness, it has a real prac- 
tical value. It would be invaluable to all the hungry 
Britons in Paris who lower our national character, and, 
what is a far greater calamity, demoralize even French 
cooks, by their well-meant but ignorant endeavors to dine. 
There is a description of a dinner at the Cafe Foy alto- 
gether inimitable ; so graphic that the reader almost fan- 
cies himself in the actual enjoyment of the felicity 
depicted. Several of the Fitz-Boodle papers, which ap- 
peared in 1842 -- 43, are omitted in the Miscellanies. But 
in spite of the judgment of the author himself we venture 
to think that Mr. Fitz-Boodle's love experiences as re- 
corded in ^'Miss Lowe" (October, 1842), "Dorothea" 
(January, 1843), and "Ottilia" (February, 1843), are not 
unworthy of a place beside the " Ravenswing," and should 
be preserved as a warning to all fervent young men. And 
during these hard-working years we have also a paper on 
" Dickens in France," containing an amazing description 
of Nicholas Nickleby, as translated and adapted (bless 
thee. Bottom, thou art translated indeed !) to the Parisian 
stage, followed by a hearty defence of Boz against the 
criticism of Jules Janin ; and " Bluebeard's Ghost," in its 
idea — that of carrying on a well-known story beyond its 
proper end — the forerunner of Rebecca and Rowena. 
" Little Travels " is the title of two papers, in May and 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 257 

October, 1844, — sketches from Belgium, closely resem- 
bling, certainly not inferior, to the roundabout paper called 
a " Week's Holiday " ; and our enumeration of his con- 
tributions to Fraser closes with the incomparable " Barry 
Lyndon." "The Hoggarty Diamond" is better and 
purer, and must therefore rank higher ; but " Barry 
Lyndon " in its own line stands, we think, unrivalled ; 
immeasurably superior, if we must have comparative crit- 
i(iism, to "• Count Fathom " ; superior even to the history 
of " Jonathan Wild." It seems to us to equal the sarcasm 
and remorseless irony of Fielding's masterpiece, with a 
wider range and a more lively interest. 

Mr. Thackeray's connection with Punch began very 
early in the history of that periodical, and he continued a 
constant contributor at least up to 1850. The acquisition 
was an invaluable one to Mr, Punch, Without undue 
disparagement of that august dignitary, it may now be 
said that at first he was too exclusively metropolitan in 
his tone, too much devoted to " natural histories " of med- 
ical students and London idlers, — in fact, somewhat 
Cockney. Mr. Thackeray at once stamped it with a 
different tone ; made its satire universal, adapted it^ fun 
to the appreciation of cultivated men. On the other hand, 
the connection with Punch must have been of the utmost 
value to Mr. Thackeray. He had the widest range, could 
write without restraint, and without the finish and com- 
pleteness necessary in more formal publications. The 
unrestrained practice in Punchy besides the improvement 
in style and in modes of thought which practice always 
gives, probably had no small share in teaching him 
wherein his real strength lay. For it is worthy of notice 
in Mr. Thackeray's literary career that this knowledge did 
not come easily or soon, but only after hard work and 



258 'THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

much experience. His early writings both in Fraser and 
Punch were as if groping. In these periodicals his hap- 
• pier efforts come last, and after many preludes, — some 
of them broken off abruptly. " Catherine " is lost in 
" George de Barnwell " ; " Yellowplush " and " Fitz-Boo- 
dle " are the preambles to " Barry Lyndon " and " The 
Hoggarty Diamond " ; Punch's " Continental Tour " and 
the " Wanderings of the Fat Contributor " close untimely, 
and are succeeded by the " Snob Papers " and the kindly 
wisdom of the elder Brown. Fame, indeed, was not now 
far off; but ere it could be reached there remained yet 
repeated effort and frequent disappointment. With pecu- 
liar pleasure we now recall the fact that these weary days 
of struggle and obscurity were cheered in no inconsidera- 
ble degree by the citizens of Edinburgh. 

There happened to be placed in the window of an 
Edinburgh jeweller a silver statuette of Mr. Punchy with 
his dress en rigueur^ — his comfortable and tidy paunch, 
wdth all its buttons ; his hunch ; his knee-breeches, with 
their ties ; his compact Uttle legs, one foot a little for- 
ward ; and the intrepid and honest, kindly little fellow 
firmly set on his pins, with his customary look of up to 
and good for anything. In his hand was his weapon, a 
pen ; his skull was an inkhorn, and his cap its lid. A 
passer-by — who had long been grateful to our author, as 
to a dear unknown and enriching friend, for his writings 
in Fraser and in Punchy and had longed for some way of 
reaching him, and telling him how his work was relished 
and valued — bethought himself of sending this inkstand 
to Mr. Thackeray. He went in, and asked its price. 
" Ten guineas, sir." He said to himself, " There are 
many who feel as I do ; why should n't we send him up 
to him ? I '11 get eighty several half-crowns, and that 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 259 

will do it " (he had ascertained that there would be dis- 
count for ready money). With the help of a friend, who 
says he awoke to Thackeray, and divined his great future, 
when he came, one evening, in Fraser for May, 1844, on 
the word kinopium^ the half-crowns were soon forth- 
coming, and it is pleasant to remember, that in the " octo- 
gint" are the names of Lord Jeffrey and Sir William 
Hamilton, who gave their half-crowns with the heartiest 
good will. A short note was written telling the story. 
The little man in silver was duly packed, and sent with 
the following inscription round the base : — 

GULIELMO MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 

ARMA VIKUMQUE 
GBATI NECNON GRAT^ EDINENSES 

LXXX. 
D. D. D. 

To this the following reply was made : — 

" 13 Young Street, Kensington Square, May 11, 1848. 
" My dear Sir, — The arms and the man arrived in safety 
yesterday, and I am glad to know the names of two of the 
eighty Edinburgh friends who have taken such a kind method 
of showing their good-will towards me. If you are grati I am 
gratior. Such tokens of regard & sympathy are very precious 

* Here is the passage. It is from Little Travels and Roadside 
Sketches. Why are they not republished? We must have his Opera 
Omnia. He is on the top of the Richmond omnibus. "If I were a 
great prince, and rode outside of coaches (as I should if I were a great 
prince), I would, whether I smoked or not, have a case of the best 
Havannas in my pocket, not for my own smoking, but to give them 
to the snobs on the coach, who smoke the vilest cheroots. They poi- 
son the air with the odor of their filthy weeds. A man at all easy in 
circumstances would spare himself much annoyance by taking the 
above simple precaution. 

*' A gentleman sitting beliind me tapped me on the back, and asked 
for a light. He was a footman or rather valet. He had no livery, but 



260 THACKEKAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

to a writer like myself, who have some difficulty still in making 
people understand what you have been good enough to find 
out in Edinburgh, that under the mask satirical there walks 
about a sentimental gentleman who means not unkindly to any 
mortal person. I can see exactly the same expression under 
the vizard of my little friend in silver, and hope some day to 
shake the whole octogint by the hand gratos & gratas, and 
thank them for their friendliness and regard. I think I had 
best say no more on the subject, lest I should be tempted into 
some enthusiastic writing of w'' I am afraid. I assure you these 
tokens of what I can't help acknowledging as popularity — 
make me humble as well as grateful — and make- me feel an 
almost awful sense of the responsibility w^ falls upon a man in 
such a station. Is it deserved or undeserved ? Who is this 
that sets up to preach to mankind, and to laugh at many things 
w*» men reverence ? I hope I may be able to tell the truth al- 
ways, & to see it aright, according to the eyes w^ God Al- 
mighty gives me. And if, in the exercise of my calling I get 
friends, and find encouragement and sympathy, I need not tell 
you how much I feel and am thankful for this support. In- 
deed I can't reply lightly upon this subject or feel otherwise 
than very grave when people begin to praise me as you do. 
Wishing you and my Edinburgh friends all health and happi- 
ness believe me my dear Sir most faithfully yours 

" W. M. Thackeray." 

How like the man is this gentle and serious letter, 

the three friends who accompanied him were tall men in pepper-and 
salt undress jackets, with a duke's coronet on their buttons. 

" After tapping me on the back, and when he had finished his che- 
root, the gentleman produced another wind instrument, which he 
called a * kinopium,' a sort of trumpet, on which he showed a great 
inclination to play. He began puffing out of the kinopium an abom- 
inable air, which he said was the ' Duke's March.' It was played by 
the particular request of the pepper-and-salt gentry. 

" The noise was so abominable, that even the coachman objected, 
and said it was not allowed to play on his bus. * Very well,' said the 

valet, ^we^re only of the Duke of B 's establishment, THAT'S 

ALL.'" 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 261 

written these long years ago ! He tells us frankly his 
" calling " : he is a preacher to mankind. He " laughs," 
he does not sneer. He asks home questions at himself as 
well as the world : " Who is this ? " Then his feeling 
^' not otherwise than very grave " when people begin to 
praise, is true conscientiousness. This servant of his 
Master hoped to be able " to tell the truth always, and to 
see it aright, according to the eyes which God Almighty 
gives me." His picture by himself will be received as 
correct now^ " a sentimental gentleman, meaning not un- 
kindly to any mortal person," — sentimental in its good 
old sense, and a gentleman in heart and speech. And 
that little touch about enthusiastic writing, proving all the 
more that the enthusiasm itself was there. 

Of his work in Punch, the " Ballads of Pleaceman X," 
the " Snob Papers," " Jeames' Diary," the " Travels and 
Sketches in London," a " Little Dinner at Timmins'," are 
now familiar to most readers. But besides these he 
wrote much which has found no place in the Miscellanies. 
M. de la Pluche discoursed touching many matters other 
than his own rir- e and fall. '' Our Fat Contributor " wan- 
dered over the face of the earth gaining and imparting 
much wisdom and experience, if little information; Dr. 
Solomon Pacihco " prosed " on various things besides the 
" pleasures of being a Fogy " ; and even two of the 
*' Novels by Eminent Hands," Crinoline and Stars and 
Stripes, have been left to forgetfulness. " Mrs. Tickle- 
toby's Lectures on the History of England," in Vol. IH. 
are especially good reading. Had they been completed, 
they would have formed a valuable contribution to the 
philosophy of history. His contributions to Punch be- 
came less frequent about 1850, but the connection was 



262 THACKERAY'S LITEEARY CAREER. 

not entirely broken off till much later ; we remember, in 
1854, the "Letters from the Seat of War, by our own 
Bashi-Bazouk," who was, in fact. Major Gahagan again, 
always foremost in his country's cause. To the last, as 
Mr. Punch has himself informed us, he continued to be 
an adviser and warm friend, and was a constant guest at 
the weekly symposia. 

In addition to all this w^ork for periodicals, Mr. Thack 
eray had ventured on various independent publications. 
We have already alluded to Flore et Zephyr^ his first at-' 
tempt. In 1840, he again tried fortune with "The Paris 
Sketch-Book," which is at least remarkable for a dedica- 
tion possessing the quite peculiar merit of expressing real 
feehng. It is addressed to M. Aretz, Tailor, 27 Rue 
Richelieu, Paris ; and we quote it the more readily that, 
owing to the failure of these volumes to attract public at- 
tention, the rare virtues of that gentleman have been less 
widely celebrated than they deserve : — 

" Sir, — It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge 
and praise virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it 
out for the admiration and example of his fellow-men. 

*' Some months since, when you presented to the writer of 
these pages a small account for coats and pantaloons manufac- 
tured by you, and when you were met by a statement fi:om 
your debtor that an immediate settlement of your bill would 
be extremely inconvenient to him, your reply was, '• Mon dieu, 
sir, let not that annoy you ; if you want money, as a gentle- 
man often does in a strange country, I have a thousand-fi^anc 
note at my house, which is quite at your service.' History or 
experience, sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions that 
can be compared to yours, — an offer like this fi'om a stranger 
and a tailor seems to me so astonishing, — that you must par- 
don me for making your virtue public, and acquainting the 
English nation with your merit and your name. Let me add, 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 263 

sir, that you live on the first floor ; that your cloths and fit are 
excellent, and your charges moderate and just; and, as a 
humble tribute of my admiration, permit me to lay these 
volumes at your feet. Your obliged faithfial servant, 

" M. A. TiTMARSH." 

Some of the papers in these two volumes were reprints, 
as " Little Poinsinet " and " Cartouche," from Fraser for 
1839 ; " Mary Ancel," from The New Monthly for 1839 ; 
others appeared then for the first time. They are, it 
must be confessed, of unequal merit. " A Caution to 
Travellers " is a swindling business, afterwards narrated 
in Pendennisj by Amory or Altamont as among his own 
respectable adventures ; " Mary Ancel " and " The 
Painter's Bargain " are amusing stories ; while a " Gam- 
bler's Death" is a tale quite awful in the every-day reality 
of its horror. There is much forcible criticism on the 
French school of painting and of novel- writing, and two 
papers especially good, called " Caricatures and Lithog- 
raphy in Paris," and " Meditations at Versailles," the 
former of which gives a picture of Parisian manners and 
feeling in the Orleans times in no way calculated to make 
us desire those days back again ; the latter an expression 
of the thoughts called up by the splendor of Versailles 
and the beauty of the Petit Trianon, in its truth, sarcasm, 
and half-melancholy, worthy of his best days. All these 
the public, we think, would gladly welcome in a more 
accessible form. Of the rest of the SJcetch-Book the same 
can hardly be said, and yet we should ourselves much 
regret never to have seen, for example, the four graceful 
imitations of B^ranger. 

The appreciative and acquisitive tendencies of our 
Yankee friends forced, we are told, independent author- 
ship on Lord Macaulay and Sir James Stephen. We owe 



264 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

to the same cause the publication of the " Comic Tales 
and Sketches" in 1841 ; Mr. Yellowplush's memoirs 
having been more than once reprinted in America before 
that date. The memoirs were accompanied with " The 
Fatal Boots " (from the Comic Almanach) ; the '' Bed- 
ford Row Conspiracy," and the Reminiscences of that 
astonishing Major Gahagan (both from the New Monthly 
Magazine^ 1838-1840, a periodical then in great glory, 
with Hood, Marryatt, Jerrold, and Laman Blanchard 
among its contributors) ; all now so known and so appre- 
ciated that the failure of this third effort seems altogether 
unaccountable. In 1843, however, the " Irish Sketch- 
Book " was, we believe, tolerably successful ; and in 1846 
the " Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo " was still 
more so ; in which year also Vanity Fair began the ca- 
reer which has given him his place and name in English 
literature. 

We have gone into these details concerning Mr. Thack- 
eray's early literary life, not only because they seem to us 
interesting and instructive in themselves ; not only be- 
cause we think his severe judgment rejecting so many of 
his former efforts should in several instances be reversed ; 
but because they give us much aid in arriving at a true 
estimate of his genius. He began literature as a profes- 
sion early in life, — about the age of twenty-five, — but 
even then he was, as he says of Addison, " full and ripe." 
Yet it was long before he attained the measure of his 
strength, or discovered the true bent of his powers. His 
was no sudden leap into fame. On the contrary, it was 
by slow degrees, and after many and vain endeavors that 
he attained to anything like success. Were it only to 
show how hard these endeavors were, the above retrospect 
would be well worth while ; not that the retrospect is 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 265 

anything like exhaustive. In addition to all we have 
mentioned, he wrote for the Westmi7ister, for the Exam- 
iner^ and the Times ; was connected with the Constitu- 
tional^ and also, it is said, with the Torch and the Par- 
thenon^ — these last three being papers which enjoyed a 
brief existence. No man ever more decidedly refuted 
the silly notion which disassociates genius from labor. 
His industry must have been unremitting, for he worked 
slowly, rarely retouching, writing always with great 
thought and habitual correctness of expression. His 
writing would of itself show this ; always neat and 
plain ; capable of great beauty and minuteness. He used 
to say that if all trades failed, he would earn sixpences 
by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed (not the 
Athanasian) in the size of one. He considered and 
practised caligraphy as one of the fine arts, as did Porson 
and Dr. Thomas Young. He was continually catching 
new ideas from passing things, and seems frequently to 
have carried his work in his pocket, and when a thought, 
or a turn, or a word struck him, it was at once recorded. 
In the fulness of his experience, he was well pleased 
when he wrote six pages of Esmond in a day ; and he al- 
ways worked in the day, not at night. He never threw 
away his ideas ; if at any time they passed unheeded, 
or were carelessly expressed, he repeats them, or works 
them up more tellingly. In these earlier writings we 
often stumble upon the germ of an idea, or a story, or a 
character with which his greater works have made us al- 
ready familiar ; thus the swindling scenes during the sad 
days of Becky's decline and fall, and the Baden sketches 
in the Newcomes, the Deuceaces, and Punters, and Lo- 
ders, are all in the Yellowplush Papers and the Paris 
Sketch- Book ; the University pictures of Pendennis are 



266 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

sketched, though slightly, in the Shabby- Genteel Story ; 
the anecdote of the child whose admirer of seven will 
learn that she has left town " from the newspapers," is 
transferred from the " Book of Snobs " to Ethel New- 
come ; another child, in a different rank of life, whose ac- 
quisition of a penny gains for her half-a-dozen sudden 
followers and friends, appears, we think, three times ; 
" Canute," neglected in Punchy is incorporated in Rebecca 
and Rowena. And his names, on which he bestowed no 
ordinary care, and which have a felicity almost deserving 
an article to themselves, are repeated again and again. 
He had been ten years engaged in literary work before 
the conception of Vanity Fair grew up. Fortunately 
for him it was declined by at least one magazine, and, as 
we can well believe, not without much anxiety and many 
misgivings he sent it out to the world alone. Its progress 
was at first slow ; but we cannot think its success was 
ever doubtful. A friendly notice in the Edinburgh^ when 
eleven numbers had appeared, did something, the book 
itself did the rest ; and before Vanity Fair was completed, 
the reputation of its author was established. 

Mr. Thackeray's later literary life is familiar to all. It 
certainly was not a life of idleness. Vanity Fair^ Pen- 
dennis, Fsmond, The Newcomes^ The Virginians^ Philip ; 
the Lectures on the " Humorists " and the " Georges " ; 
and that wonderful series of Christmas stories, Mrs, Per- 
kinses Ball, Our Street J Dr. Birch, Rebecca and Rowena, 
and The Rose and the Ring, represent no small labor on 
the part of the writer, no small pleasure and improve- 
ment on the part of multitudes of readers. For the sake 
of the Cornhill Magazine he reverted to the editorial 
avocations of his former days, happily with a very differ- 
ent result both on the fortunes of the periodical and his 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 267 

own, but, we should think, with nearly as much discom- 
fort to himself. The public, however, were the gainers, 
if only they owe to this editorship the possessioji of Lovel 
the Widower, We believe that Lovel was written for the 
stage, and was refused by the management of the Olym- 
pic about the year 1854. Doubtless the decision was 
wise, and Lovel might have failed as a comedy. But as 
a tale it is quite unique, — full of humor, and curious ex- 
perience of life, and insight ; with a condensed vigor, and 
grotesque effects and situations which betray its dramatic 
origin. The tone of many parts of the book, particularly 
the description of the emotions of a disappointed lover, 
shows the full maturity of the author's powers ; but there 
is a daring knd freshness about other parts of it which 
would lead us to refer the dramatic sketch even to an 
earlier date than 1854. This imperfect sketch of his 
literary labors may be closed, not inappropriately, with 
the description which his " faithful old Gold Pen " gives 
us of the various tasks he set it to : — 

" Since he my faithful service did engage 
To follow him through his queer pilgrimage, 
I 've drawn and written many a line and page. 

" Caricatures I scribbled have, and rhymes, 
And dinner-cards, and picture pantomimes, 
And merry little children's books at times. 

" I 've writ the foolish fancy of his brain ; 
The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain; 
The idle word that he 'd wish back again. 

" I 've helped him to pen many a hne for bread; 
To joke, with sorrow aching in his head ; 
And make your laughter when his own heart bled. 

" Feasts that were ate a thousand days ago. 
Biddings to wine that long hath ceased to flow. 
Gay meetings with good fellows long laid low; 



268 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

" Summons to bridal, banquet, burial, ball, 
Tradesman's polite reminders of his small 
Account due Christmas last, — I 've answered all. 

" Foot Diddler's tenth petition for a half- 
Guinea; Miss Bunyan's for an autograph; 
So I refuse, accept, lament, or laugh, 

" Condole, congratulate, invite, praise, scoff, 
Day after day still dipping in my trough. 
And scribbling pages after pages off. 

" Nor pass the words as idle phrases by ; 
Stranger ! I never writ a flattery, 
Nor signed the page that registered a lie." 

" En r^alite," says the writer of an interesting notice 
in Le Temps, " Tauteur de Vanity Fair (la Foire aux 
vanites) est un satiriste, un moraliste, un humoriste, au- 
quel il a manque, pour etre tout-k-fait grand, d'etre un 
artiste. Je dis tout-a-fait grand ; car s'il est douteux que, 
comme humoriste, on le puisse comparer soit k Lamb, 
soit a Sterne, il est bien certain, du moins, que comme 
satiriste, il ne connait pas de superieurs, pas m§me Dry- 
den, pas meme Swift, pas meme Pope. Et ce qui le 
distingue d'eux, ce qui Feleve au dessus d'eux, ce qui fait 
de lui un genie essentiellement original, c'est que sa 
colere, pour qui est capable d'en penetrer le secret, n'est 
au fond que la reaction d'une nature tendre, furieuse 
d'avoir ete desappointee" Beyond doubt the French 
critic is right in holding Thackeray's special powers to 
have been those of a satirist or humorist. We shall form 
but a very inadequate conception of his genius if we look 
at him exclusively, or even chiefly, as a novelist. His 
gifts were not those of a teller of stories. He made up a 
story in which his characters played their various parts, 
because the requirement of interest is at the present day 
imperative, and because stories are well paid for, and also 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 269 

because to do this was to a certain extent an amusement 
to himself ; but it was often, we suspect, a great worry 
and puzzle to him, and never resulted in any marked suc- 
cess. It is not so much that he is a bad constructor of a 
plot, as that his stories have no plot at all. We say 
nothing of such masterpieces of constructive art as Tom 
Jones ; he is far from reaching even the careless power 
of the stories of Scott. None of his novels end with the 
orthodox marriage of hero and heroine, except Penden- 
nis, which might just as well have ended without it. The 
stereotyped matrimonial wind-up in novels can of course 
very easily be made game of ; but it has a rational mean- 
ing. When a man gets a wife and a certain number of 
hundreds a year, he grows stout, and his adventures are 
over. Hence novelists naturally take this as the crisis in 
a man's life to which all that has gone before leads up. 
But for Mr. Thackeray's purposes a man or woman is as 
good after marriage as before it, — indeed, rather better. 
To some extent this is intentional ; a character, as he 
says somewhere, is too valuable a property to be easily 
parted with. Besides, he is not quite persuaded that 
marriage concludes all that is interesting in the life of a 
man : " As the hero and heroine pass the matrimonial 
barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as if the 
drama were over then, the doubts and struggles of life 
ended ; as if, once landed in the marriage country, all 
were green and pleasant there, and wife and husband had 
nothing but to link each other's arms together, and wan- 
der gently downwards towards old age in happy and per- 
fect fruition." But he demurs to this view ; and as he 
did not look on a man's early life as merely an introduc- 
tion to matrimony, so neither did he regard that event as 
a final conclusion. Rejecting, then, this natural and ordi- 



270 THACKERAY'S LITERAEY CAREER. 

nary catastrophe, he makes no effort to provide another. 
His stories stop, but they don't come to an end. There 
seems no reason why they should not go on further, or 
why they should not have ceased before. Nor does this 
want of finish result from weariness on the part of the 
writer, or from that fear of weariness on the part of 
readers which Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham expresses to 
Miss Martha Buskbody : " Really, madam, you must 
be aware that every volume of a narrative turns less and 
less interesting as the author draws to a conclusion ; just 
like your tea, which, though excellent hyson, is necessarily 
weaker and more insipid in the last cup. Now, as I think 
the one is by no means improved by the luscious lump of 
half-dissolved sugar usually found at the bottom of it, so 
I am of opinion that a history, growing already vapid, is 
but dully crutched up by a detail of circumstances which 
every reader must have anticipated, even though the 
author exhaust on them every flowery epithet in the lan- 
guage." It arises from the want of a plot, from the want 
often of any hero or heroine round whom a plot can 
centre. Most novelists know how to let the life out to- 
wards the end, so that the story dies quite naturally, hav- 
ing been wound up for so long. But his airy nothings, if 
once life is breathed into them, and they are made to 
speak and act, and love and hate, will not die ; on the 
contrary, they grow in force and vitality under our very 
eye ; the curtain comes sheer down upon them when they 
are at their best. Hence his trick of re-introducing his 
characters in subsequent works, as fresh and life-like as 
ever. He does not indeed carry this so far as Dumas, 
whose characters are traced with edifying minuteness of 
detail from boyhood to the grave ; Balzac or our own 
Trollope afford, perhaps, a closer comparison, although 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 271 

neither of these writers — certaioly not Mr. Trollope — 
rivals Thackeray in the skill with which such reappear- 
ances are managed. In the way of delineation of char- 
acter we know of few things more striking in its consist- 
ency and truth than Beatrix Esmond grown into the 
Baroness Bernstein : the attempt was hazardous, the 
success complete. 

Yet this deficiency in constructive art was not incon- 
sistent with dramatic power of the highest order. Cu- 
riously enough, if his stories for the most part end 
abruptly, they also for the most part open well. Of 
some of them, as Pendennis and the Newcomes^ the be- 
ginnings are peculiarly felicitous. But his dramatic 
power is mainly dispkyed in his invention and repre- 
sentation of character. In invention his range is perhaps 
limited, though less so than is commonly said. He has 
not, of course, the sweep of Scott, and, even where a 
comparison is fairly open, he does not show Scott's 
creative faculty ; thus, good as his high life below stairs 
may be, he has given us no Jenny Dennison. He does 
not attempt artisan life like George Eliot, nor, like 
other writers of the day, affect rural simplicity, or de- 
lineate provincial peculiarities (the Mulligan and Costi- 
gan are national), or represent special views or opinions. 
But he does none of these things, — not so much because 
his range is limited as because his art is universal. 
There are many phases of human life on which he 
has not touched ; few developments of human nature. 
He has caught those traits which are common to all 
mankind, peer and artisan alike, and he may safely 
omit minor points of distinction. It is a higher art 
to draw men, than to draw noblemen or workingmen. 
If the specimen of our nature be brought before us, it 



272 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

matters little whether it be dressed in a lace coat or a 
fustian jacket. AmoDg novelists he stands, in this par- 
ticular, hardly second to Scott. His pages are filled 
with those touches of nature which make the whole 
world kin. Almost every passion and emotion of the 
heart of man finds a place in his pictures. These pic- 
tures are taken mainly from the upper and middle 
classes of society, with an occasional excursion into Bo- 
hemia, sometimes even into depths beyond that pleasant 
land of lawlessness. In variety, truth, and consistency, 
they are unrivalled. They are not caricatures, they are 
not men of humors ; they are the men and women whom 
we daily meet ; they are, in the fullest sense of the word, 
representative ; and yet they are drawn so sharply and 
finely that we never could mistake or confound them. 
Pendennis, Clive Newcome, Philip, are all placed in cir- 
cumstances very much alike, and yet they are discrimi- 
nated throughout by delicate and certain touches, which 
we hardly perceive even while we feel their effect. 
Only one English writer of fiction can be compared 
to Mr. Thackeray in this power of distinguishing ordi- 
nary characters, — the authoress of Pride and Prejudice, 
But with this power he combines, in a very singular 
manner, the power of seizing humors, or peculiarities, 
when it so pleases him. Jos. Sedley, Charles Honeyman, 
Fred Bay ham, Major Pendennis, are so marked as to 
be fairly classed as men of humors ; and in what a mas- 
terly way the nature in each is caught and held firm 
throughout ! In national peculiarities he is especially 
happy. The Irish he knows well : the French, perhaps, 
still better. How wonderfully clever is the sketch of 
" Mary, Queen of Scots" and the blustering Gascon, and 
the rest of her disreputable court at Baden ! And what 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 273 

can those who object to Thackeray's women say of that 
gentle lady Madame de Florae, — a sketch of ideal beau- 
ty, with her early, never-forgotten sorrow, her pure, holy 
resignation? To her inimitable son no words can do 
justice. The French-English of his speech would make 
the fortune of any ordinary novel. It is as unique, and 
of a more delicate humor, than the orthography of 
Jeames. Perhaps more remarkable than even his inven- 
tion is the fidelity with which the conception of his char- 
acters is preserved. This never fails. They seem to 
act, as it were, of themselves. The author having once 
projected them, appears to have nothing more to do with 
them. They act somehow according to their own na- 
tures, unprompted by him, and beyond his control. He 
tells us this himself in one of those delightful and most 
characteristic Roundabout Papers, which are far too 
much and too generally undervalued: "I have been 
surprised at the observations made by some of my 
characters. It seems as if an occult power was moving 
the pen. The personage does or says something, and I 
ask, How the dickens did he come to think of that ? . . . 
We spake anon of the inflated style of some writers. 
What also if there is an afflated style ; when a writer 
is like a Pythoness, or her oracle tripod, and mighty 
words, words which he cannot help, come blowing, and 
bellowing, and whistling, and moaning through the speak- 
ing pipes of his bodily organ ? " Take one of his most 
subtle sketches, — though it is but a sketch, — Elizabeth, 
in Lovel the Widower. The woman has a character, and 
a strong one ; she shows it, and acts up to it ; but it is as 
great a puzzle to us as the character of Hamlet; the 
author himself does not understand it. This is, of course, 
art ; and it is the highest perfection of art ; it is the 
12* R 



274 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

art of Shakespeare; and hence it is that Thackeray's 
novels are interesting irrespective of the plot, or story, 
or whatever we choose to call it. His characters come 
often without much purpose : they go often without 
much reason; but they are always welcome, and for 
the most part we wish them well. Dumas makes up 
for the want of a plot by wild incident and spasmodic 
writing; Thackeray makes us forget a like deficiency 
by the far higher means of true conceptions, and con- 
sistent delineations of human nature. Esmond^ alone 
of all his more important fictions, is artistically con- 
structed. The marriage indeed of Esmond and Lady 
Castlewood marks no crisis in their lives ; on the con- 
trary, it might have happened at any time, and makes 
little change in their relations; but the work derives 
completeness from the skill with which the events of the 
time are connected with the fortunes of the chief actors 
in the story, — the historical plot leading up to the 
catastrophe of Beatrix, the failure of the conspiracy, 
and the exile of the conspirators. In Esmond^ too, 
Thackeray's truth to nature is especially conspicuous. 
In all his books the dialogue is surprising in its nat- 
uralness, in its direct bearing on the subject in hand. 
Never before, we think, in fiction did characters so 
uniformly speak exactly like the men and women of 
real life. In Esmond — owing to the distance of the 
scene — this rare excellence was not easy of attainment, 
yet it has been attained. Every one not only acts, but 
speaks in accordance certainly with the ways of the 
time, but always like a rational human being; there 
is no trace of that unnaturalness which offends us 
even in Scott's historical novels, and which substitutes 
for intelligible converse long harangues in pompous 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 275 

diction, garnished with strange oaths, — a style of com- 
municating their ideas never adopted, we may be very 
sure, by any mortals upon this earth. Add to these 
artistic excellences a tenderness of feeling and a beauty 
of style which even Thackeray has not elsewhere 
equalled, and we come to understand why the best 
critics look on Esmond as his masterpiece. 

Nor, in speaking of Thackeray as a novelist, should we 
forget to mention — though but in a word — his command 
of the element of tragedy. The parting of George Os- 
borne with Amelia, the stern grief of old Osborne for 
the loss of his son, the later life of Beatrix Esmond, 
the death of Colonel Newcome, are in their various styles 
perfect, and remarkable for nothing more than for the 
good taste which controls and subdues them all. 

But, as we said before, to criticise Mr. Thackeray as a 
novelist is to criticise what was in him only an accident. 
He wrote stories, because to do so was the mode ; his 
stories are natural ai^ naturally sustained, because he 
could do nothing otherwise than naturally ; but to be a 
teller of stories was not his vocation. His great object 
in writing was to express himself, — his notions of life, all 
the complications and variations which can be played by 
a master on this one everlasting theme. Composite hu- 
man nature as it is, that sins and suffers, enjoys and does 
virtuously, that was " the main haunt and region of his 
song." To estimate him fairly, we must look at him as 
taking this wider range ; must consider him as a humor- 
ist, using the word as he used it himself. " The humor- 
ous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your 
pity, your kindness ; your scorn for untruth, pretension, 
imposture ; your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the 
oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and 



276 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

ability, he comments on all the ordinary actions and pas- 
sions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the 
week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he 
finds and speaks and feels the truth best, we regard him, 
esteem him, — sometimes love him." Adopting this 
point of view, and applying this standard, it seems to 
us that no one of the great humorists of whom he has 
spoken is deserving equally with himself of our respect, 
esteem, and love ; — respect for intellectual power, pla- 
cing him on a level even with Swift and Pope ; esteem 
for manliness as thorough as the manliness of Fielding, 
and rectitude as unsullied as the rectitude of Addison ; 
love for a nature as kindly as that of Steele. Few will 
deny the keen insight, the passion for truth of the week- 
day preacher we have lost ; few will now deny the kind- 
liness of his disposition, but many will contend that the 
kindliness was too much restrained ; that the passion for 
truth was allowed to degenerate into a love of detecting 
hidden faults. The sermons on women have been ob- 
jected to with especial vehemence and especial want of 
reason. No one who has read Mr. Brown's letters to his 
nephew, — next to the Snob Papers and Sydney Smith's 
Lectures, the best modern work on moral philosophy, — 
will deny that Mr. Thackeray can at least appreciate 
good women, and describe them : — 

" Sir, I do not mean to tell you that there are no women in 
the world, vulgar and ill-humored, rancorous and narrow- 
minded, mean schemers, son-in-law hunters, slaves of fashion, 
hypocrites ; but I do respect, admire, and almost worship good 
women ; and I think there is a very fair number of such to be 
found in this world, and I have no doubt, in every educated 
Enghshman's circle of society, whether he finds that circle in 
palaces in Belgravia and May Fair, in snug little suburban 
villas, in ancient comfortable old Bloomsbury, or in back par- 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 277 

lors behind the shop. It has been my fortune to meet with 
excellent English ladies in every one of these places, — wives 
graceful and aiFectionate, matrons tender and good, daughters 
happy and pure-minded, and I urge the society of such to you, 
because I defy you to think evil in their company. Walk into 
the drawing-room of Lady Z., that great lady : look at her 
charming face, and hear her voice. You know that she can't 
but be good, with such a face and such a voice. She is one 
of those fortunate beings on whom it has pleased Heaven to 
bestow all sorts of its most precious gifts and richest worldly 
favors. With what grace she receives you ; with what a frank 
kindness and natural sweetness and dignity ! Her looks, her 
motions, her words, her thoughts, all seem to be beautiful and 
harmonious quite. See her with her children, what woman 
can be more simple and loving ? After you have talked to her 
for a while, you very likely find that she is ten times as well 
read as you are : she has a hundred accomplishments which 
she is not in the least anxious to show off, and makes no more 
account of them than of her diamonds, or of the splendor round 
about her, — to all of which she is born, and has a happy, ad- 
mirable claim of nature and possession, — admirable and happy 
for her and for us too ; for is it not a happiness for us to admire 
her ? Does anybody grudge her excellence to that paragon ? 
Sir, we may be thankful to be admitted to contemplate such 
consummate goodness and beauty : and as, in looking at a fine 
landscape or a fine work of art, every generous heart must be 
delighted and improved, and ought to feel grateful afterwards, 
so one may feel charmed and thankful for having the opportu- 
nity of knowing an almost perfect woman. Madam, if the gout 
and the custom of the world permitted, I would kneel down 
and kiss the hem of your ladyship's robe. To see your gra- 
cious face is a comfort, — to see you walk to your carriage is a 
holiday. Drive her faithfully, O thou silver-wigged coachman ! 
drive to all sorts of splendors and honors and royal festivals. 
And for us, let us be glad that we should have the privilege to 
admire her. 

" Now, transport yourself in spirit, my good Bob, into another 



278 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

drawing-room. There sits an old lady of more than fourscore 
years, serene and kind, and as beautiful in her age now, as in 
her youth, when History toasted her. What has she not seen, 
and is she not ready to tell ? All the fame and wit, all the 
rank and beauty, of more than half a century, have passed 
through those rooms where you have the honor of making 
your best bow. She is as simple now as if she had never had 
any flattery to dazzle her : she is never tired of being pleased 
and being kind. Can that have been anything but a good life 
whii h after more than eighty years of it are spent, is so calm ? 
Could she look to the end of it so cheerfully, if its long course 
had not been pure ? Respect her, I say, for being so happy, 
now that she is old. We do not know what goodness and 
charity, what affections, what trials, may have gone to make 
that charming sweetness of temper, and complete that perfect 
manner. But if we do not admire and reverence such an old 
age as that, and get good from contemplating it, what are we 
to respect and admire. 

" Or shall we walk through the shop (while N. is recom- 
mending a tall copy to an amateur, or folding up a twopenny- 
worth of letter-paper, and bowing to a poor customer in a 
jacket and apron with just as much respectful gravity as he 
would show while waiting upon a duke), and see Mrs. N. play- 
ing with the child in the back parlor until N. shall come in to 
tea '? They drink tea at five o'clock ; and are actually as well- 
bred as those gentlefolks who dine three hours later. Or will 
you please to step into Mrs. J.'s lodgings, who is waiting, and 
at work, until her husband comes home from Chambers ? She 
blushes and puts the work away on hearing the knock, but 
when she sees who the visitor is, she takes it with a smile from 
behind the sofa cushion, and behold, it is one of J.'s waist- 
coats on which she is sewing buttons. She might have been a 
countess blazing in diamonds, had Fate so willed it, and the 
higher her station the more she would have adorned it. But 
she looks as charming while plying her needle as the great 
lady in the palace whose equal she is — in beauty, in goodness, 
in high-bred grace and simplicity : at least, I can't fancy her 
better, or any peeress being more than her peer." 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 279 

But then be is accused of not having represented this. 
" It is said," to quote a friendly critic in the Edinburgh 
Re\new for 1848, " that having with great skill put to- 
gether a creature of which the principal elements are in- 
discriminating affection, ill-requited devotion, ignorant 
partiality, a weak will and a narrow intellect, he calls on 
us to worship his poor idol as the type of female ex- 
cellence. This is true." Feminine critics enforce simi- 
lar charges yet more vehemently. Thus, Miss Bronte 
says : " As usual, he is unjust to women, quite unjust. 
There is hardly any punishment he does not deserve for 
making Lady Castlewood peep through a keyhole, listen 
at a door, and be jealous of a boy and a milkmaid." Mrs. 
Jameson criticises him more elaborately : " No woman 
resents his Rebecca, — inimitable Becky ! No woman 
but feels and acknowledges with a shiver the complete- 
ness of that wonderful and finished artistic creation ; but 

every woman resents the selfish, inane Amelia Laura 

in Pendennis is a yet more fatal mistake. She is drawn 
with every generous feeling, every good gift. We do not 
complain that she loves that poor creature Pendennis, for 
she loved him in her childhood. She grew up with that 
love in her heart ; it came between her and the percep- 
tion of his faults ; it is a necessity indivisible from her 
nature. Hallowed, through its constancy, therein alone 
w^ould lie its best excuse, its beauty and its truth. But 
Laura, faithless to that first affection ; Laura waked up 
to the appreciation of a far more manly and noble na- 
ture, in love with Warrington, and then going back to 
Pendennis, and marrying him I Such infirmity might be 
true of some women, but not of such a woman as Laura ; 
we resent the inconsistency, the indelicacy of the portrait. 
And then Lady Castlewood, — so evidently a favorite of 



280 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

the author, what shall we say of her ? The virtuous 
woman, par excellence^ who ' never sins and never for- 
gives ' ; who never resents, nor relents, nor repents ; the 
mother who is the rival of her daughter; the mother, 
who for years is the confidante of a man's delirious pas- 
sion for her own child, and then consoles him by marry- 
ing him herself! Mr. Thackeray ! this will never do ! 
Such women may exist, but to hold them up as examples 
of excellence, and fit objects of our best sympathies, is a 
fault, and proves a low standard in ethics and in art." 

But all these criticisms, even if sound, go to this only, 
that Mr. Thackeray's representations of women are un- 
just : they are confined solely to his novels. Now, if the 
view we have taken of Mr. Thackeray's genius be the 
true one, such a limitation is unfair. He is not to be 
judged only by his novels as a representer of character, 
he must be judged also by all his writings together as a 
describer and analyzer of character. In the next place 
the said criticisms are based upon wonderfully hasty gen- 
eralizations. Miss Bronte knew that she would not have 
listened at a keyhole, and she jumps at once to the con- 
clusion that neither would Lady Castle wood. But surely 
the character of that lady is throughout represented as 
marred by many feminine weaknesses falling little short 
of unamiability. Is the existence of a woman greedy of 
afiection, jealous, and unforgiving, an impossibility ? Her 
early love for Esmond we cannot quite approve ; her later 
marriage with him we heartily disapprove ; but neither 
of these things is the fault of the writer. With such a 
woman as Lady Castlewood, deprived of her husband's 
affection, the growth of an attachment towards her de- 
pendent into a warmer feeling, was a matter of extreme 
probability ; and her subsequent marriage to Esmond, 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 281 

affectionate, somewhat weak, and above all, disappointed 
elsewhere, was, in their respective relations, a mere cer- 
tainty. Not to have married them would have been a 
mistake in art. Thus, when a friend remonstrated with 
him for having made Esmond " marry his mother-in-law," 
he replied, '^ / did n't make him do it ; they did it them- 
selves." But as to Lady Castlewood's being a favorite 
with the author, which is the gravamen of the charge, 
that is a pure assumption on the part of Mrs. Jameson. 
We confess to having always received, in reading the 
book, a clear impression to the contrary. Laura, again, 
we do not admire vehemently ; but we cannot regard her 
returning to her first love, after a transient attachment to 
another, as utterly unnatural. Indeed, we think it the 
very thing a girl of her somewhat commonplace stamp of 
character would certainly have done. She never is much 
in love with Pendennis either first or last, but she mar- 
ries him nevertheless. She might have loved Warrington 
had the Fates permitted it, very differently ; and as his 
wife, would never have displayed those airs of self-satis- 
faction and moral superiority which make her so tediously 
disagreeable. But all this fault-finding runs up into the 
grand objection, that Thackeray's good women are denied 
brains ; that he preserves an essential alliance between 
moral worth and stupidity ; and it is curious to see how 
women themselves dislike this, — how, in their admiration 
of intellect, they admit the truth of Becky willingly 
enough, but indignantly deny that of Amelia. On this 
question Mr. Brown thus expresses himself: — 

" A set has been made against clever women fi'om all times. 
Take all Shakespeare's heroines : they all seem to me pretty 
much the same, affectionate, motherly, tender, that sort of 
thing. Take Scott's ladies, and other writers, each man seems 



282 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

to draw from one model : an exquisite slave is what we want 
for the most part, a humble, flattering, smiling, child-loving, 
tea-making, pianoforte-playing being, who laughs at our jokes 
however old they may be, coaxes and wheedles us in our hu- 
mors, and fondly lies to us through life." 

In the face of Rosalind, Beatrice, and Portia, it is im- 
possible to concur with Mr. Brown in his notions about 
Shakespeare's women ; but otherwise he is right. Yet it 
is but a poor defence for the deficiencies of a man of 
genius, that others have shown the like short-comings. 
And on Mr. Thackeray's behalf a much better defence 
may be pleaded ; though it may be one less agreeable to 
the sex which he is said to have maligned. That defence 
is a simple plea of not guilty ; a denial that his» women, 
as a class, want intellectual power to a greater extent 
than is consistent with truth. They vary between the 
extremes of pure goodness and pure intellect — Becky 
and Amelia — just as women do in real life. The moral 
element is certainly too prominent in Amelia ; but not 
more so than in Colonel Newcome, and we can't see any- 
thing much amiss in Helen Pendennis. Laura, as Miss 
Bell, is clever enough for any man ; and, though she af- 
terwards becomes exceedingly tiresome and a prig, she 
does not become a fool. And what man would be bold 
enough to disparage the intellectual powers of Ethel 
Newcome ? Her moral nature is at first incomplete ow- 
ing to a faulty education ; but when this has been per- 
fected through sorrow, wherein is the character deficient ? 
Besides, we must bear in mind that virtue in action is 
undoubtedly " slow." Goodness is not in itself entertain- 
ing, while ability is ; and the novelist, therefore, whose 
aim is to entertain, naturally labors most with the charac- 
ters possessing the latter, in which characters the reader 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 283 

too is most interested. Hence they acquire greater prom- 
inence both as a matter of fact in the story and also in our 
minds. Becky, Blanche Amory, 'Trix are undeniably 
more interesting, and in their points of contrast and 
resemblance afford far richer materials for study than 
Amelia, Helen Pendennis, and Laura. But this is in the 
nature of things ; and the writer must not be blamed for 
it any more than the readers. Taking, however, the 
Thackerean gallery as a whole, we cannot admit that 
either in qualities of heart or head his women are inferior 
to the women we generally meet. Perhaps he has never 
— not even in Ethel — combined these qualities in their 
fullest perfection ; but then how often do we find them so 
combined ? It seems to us that Thackeray has drawn 
women more carefully and more truly than any novelist 
in the language, except Miss Austen ; and it is small re- 
proach to any writer, that he has drawn no female char- 
acter so evenly good as Anne Elliot or Elizabeth Bennet. 
If this is true of his women, we need not labor in de- 
fence of his men. For surely it cannot be questioned 
that his representations of the ruder sex are true, nay, are 
on the whole an improvement on reality ? The ordinary 
actors who crowd his scene are not worse than the people 
we meet with every day ; his heroes, to use a stereotyped 
expression, are rather better than the average ; while one 
such character as George Warrington is worth a wilder- 
ness of commonplace excellence called into unnatural life. 
But then it is said his general tone is bitter ; he settles at 
once on the weak points of humanity, and to lay them 
bare is his congenial occupation. To a certain extent this 
was his business. "' Dearly beloved," he says, " neither 
in nor out of this pulpit do I profess to be bigger, or clev- 
erer or wiser, or better than any of you." Nevertheless 



284 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

be was a preacher, though an unassuming one ; and there- 
fore it lay upon him to point out faults, to correct rather 
than to flatter. Yet it must be confessed that his earlier 
writings are sometimes too bitter in their tone, and too 
painful in their theme. This may be ascribed partly to 
the infectious vehemence of Fraser in those days, partly 
to the influence of such experiences as are drawn upon in 
some parts of the Paris Sketch-Booh ; but, however ac- 
counted for, it must be condemned as an error in art. As 
a disposition to doubt and despond in youth betrays a 
narrow intellect, or a perverted education ; so in the be- 
ginning of a literary career, a tendency towards gloom 
and curious research after hidden evil reveals artistic 
error, or an unfortunate experience. Both in morals and 
art these weaknesses are generally the result of years 
and sorrow ; and thus the common transition is from the 
joyousness of youth to sadness, it may be to moroseness, 
in old age. But theirs is the higher and truer develop- 
ment, who reverse this process, — who, beginning with 
false tastes or distorted views, shake these off as they ad- 
vance into a clearer air, in whom knowledge but strength- 
ens the nobler powers of the soul, and whose kindliness 
and generosity, based on a firmer foundation than the 
buoyancy of mere animal life, are purer and more endur- 
ing. Such, as it appears to us, was the history of Thack- 
eray's genius. Whatever may have been the severity of 
his earlier writings, it was latterly laid aside. In the New- 
comes he follows the critical dogma which he lays down, 
that "fiction has no business to exist unless it be more 
beautiful than reality " ; and truthful kindliness marks all 
his other writings of a later date^ from the letters of Mr. 
Brown and Mr. Spec in Punchy down to the pleasant 
egotism of the " Roundabout Papers." He became disin- 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 285 

clined for severe writing even where deserved : " I have 
militated in former times, and not without glory, but I 
grow peaceable as I grow old." The only things towards 
which he never grew peaceable were pretentiousness and 
falsehood. But he preferred to busy himself with what 
was innocent and brave, to attacking even these ; he for- 
got the satirist, and loved rather honestly to praise or 
defend. The " Roundabout Papers " show this on every 
page, especially, perhaps, those on Tunbridge Toys, on 
Ribbons, on a Joke I heard from the late Thomas Hood, 
and that entitled Nil nisi honum. The very last paper 
of all was an angry defence of Lord Clyde against miser- 
able club gossip, unnecessary perhaps, but a thing one 
likes now to think that Thackeray felt stirred to do. 
" To be tremblingly alive to gentle impressions," says 
Foster, " and yet be able to preserve, when occasion re- 
quires it, an immovable heart, even amidst the most impe- 
rious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impos- 
sible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and rarest 
condition of humanity." These words do not describe the 
nature of a man who would pay out of his own pocket for 
contributions he could not insert in the Cornhill ; but if 
for heart we substitute intellect, they will perfectly de- 
scribe his literary genius. He was always tremblingly 
alive to gentle impressions, but his intellect amidst any 
emotions remained clear and immovable ; so that good 
taste was never absent, and false sentiment never came 
near him. He makes the sorrows of Werther the favor- 
ite reading of the executioner at Strasbourg."* 

* Among his ballads we have the following somewhat literal analy- 
sis of this work : — 

" Werther had a love for Charlotte 
Such as words could never utter ; 



286 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

Few men have written so macli that appeals directly 
to our emotions, and yet kept so entirely aloof from any- 
thing tawdry, from all falsetto. " If my tap," says he, " is 
not genuine, it is naught, and no man should give himself 
the trouble to drink it." It was at all times thoroughly 
genuine, and is therefore everything to us. Truthfulness, 
in fact, eager and uncompromising, was his main charac- 
teristic ; truthfulness not only in speech, but, what is a 
far more uncommon and precious virtue, truth in thought. 
His entire mental machinery acted under this law of 
truth. He strove always to find and show things as they 
really are, — true nobleness apart from trappings, unaf- 
fected simplicity, generosity without ostentation ; confident 
that so he would best convince every one that what is truly 
good pleases most, and lasts longest, and that what is oth- 
erwise soon becomes tiresome, and, worst of all, ridiculous. 
A man to whom it has been given consistently to devote 
to such a purpose the highest powers of sarcasm, ridicule, 
sincere pathos, and, though sparingly used, of exhortation, 
must be held to have fulfilled a career singularly honora- 

Wonld you know how first he met her? 
She was cutting bread and butter. 

" Charlotte was a married lady, 
And a moral man was Werther, 
And, for all the wealth of Indies, 
Would do nothing for to hurt her. 

" So he sighed and pined and ogled, 
And his passion boiled and bubbled, 
Till he blew his silly brains out. 
And no more was by it troubled. 

" Charlotte, having seen his body 
Borne before her on a shutter, 
Like a well-conducted person, 
Went on cutting bread and butter." 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 287 

ble and useful. To these noble ends he was never un- 
faithful. True, he made no boast of this. Disliking cant 
of all kinds, he made no exception in favor of the cant of 
his own profession. '^ What the dense," he writes to a 
friend, " our twopenny reputations get us at least two- 
pence-halfpenny ; and then comes nox fabul^eque manes, 
and the immortals perish." The straightforward Mr. 
Yellowplush stoutly maintains, in a similar strain, that 
people who write books are no whit better, or actuated 
by more exalted motives, than their neighbors : " Away 
with this canting about great motifs ! Let us not be too 
prowd, and fansy ourselves marters of the truth, marters 
or apostels. We are but tradesmen, working for bread, 
and not for righteousness' sake. Let 's try and work 
honestly ; but don't let us be prayting pompisly about our 
' sacred calling.' " And George Warrington, in Penden- 
nis, is never weary of preaching the same wholesome doc- 
trine. Thackeray had no sympathy with swagger of any 
kind. His soul revolted from it ; he always talked under 
what he felt. At the same time, indifference had no part 
in this want of pretence. So far from being indifferent, 
he was peculiarly sensitive to the opinions of others ; too 
much so for his own happiness. He hated to be called a 
cynical satirist ; the letter we have quoted to his Edin- 
burgh friends shows how he valued any truer apprecia- 
tion. Mere slander he could despise like a man ; he 
winced under the false estimates and injurious imputations 
tod frequent from people who should have known better. 
But he saw his profession as it really was, and spoke of it 
with his innate simplicity and dislike of humbug. And 
in this matter, as in the ordinary affairs of life, those who 
profess little, retaining a decent reserve as to their feel- 
ings and motives, are far more to be relied on than those 



288 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

who protest loudly. Whether authors are moved by love 
of fame, or a necessity for daily bread, does not greatly 
signify. The world is not concerned with this in the 
least ; it can only require that, as Mr. Yellowplush puts 
it, they should " try to work honestly '* ; and herein he 
never failed. He never wrote but in accordance with his 
convictions ; he spared no pains that his convictions 
should be in accordance with truth. For one quality we 
cannot give him too great praise ; that is the sense of the 
distinction of right and of wrong. He never puts bitter 
for sweet, or sweet for bitter ; never calls evil things 
good, or good things evil ; there is no haziness or muddle ; 
no " topsyturvifications," like Madame Sand's, in his mo- 
ralities : — with an immense and acute compassion for all 
suffering, with a power of going out of himself, and into 
almost every human feeling, he vindicates at all times the 
supremacy of conscience, the sacredness and clearness of 
the law written in our hearts. 

His keenness of observation and his entire truthfulness 
found expression in a style worthy of them in its sharp- 
ness and distinctness. The specimens we have quoted 
of his earlier writings show that these qualities marked 
his style from the first. He labored to improve those 
natural gifts. He steadily observed Mr. Yellowplush's 
recommendation touching poetical composition : " Take 
my advise, honrabble sir — listen to a humble footmin : 
it 's genrally best in poatry to understand puffickly what 
you mean yourself, and to ingspress your meaning clearly 
afterwoods — in the simpler words the better, praps." 
He always expressed his meaning clearly and in simple 
words. But as, with increasing experience, his meanings 
deepened and widened, his expression became richer. 
The language continued to the last simple and direct, but 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 289 

ii became more copious, more appropriate, more suscepti- 
ble of rhythmical combinations : in other words, it rose 
to be the worthy vehicle of more varied and more poetical 
ideas. This strange peculiarity of soberness in youth, 
of fancy coming into being at the command and for the 
service of the mature judgment, has marked some of the 
greatest writers. The words in which Lord Macaulay 
has described it with regard to Bacon may be applied, 
with little reservation, to Thackeray : " He observed 
as vigilantly, meditated as deeply, and judged as temper- 
ately, when he gave his first work to the world, as at the 
close of his long career. But in eloquence, in sweetness 
and variety of expression, and in richness of illustration, 
his later writings are far superior to those of his youth." 
Confessedly at the last he was the greatest master of 
pure English in . our day. His style is never ornate, on 
the contrary is always marked by a certain reserve which 
surely betokens thought and real feeling ; is never forced 
or loaded, only entirely appropriate and entirely beauti* 
ful ; like crystal, at once .clear and splendid. We quote 
two passages, both from books written in his prime, not 
merely as justifying these remarks, but because they il- 
lustrate qualities of his mind second only to his truthful- 
ness, — his sense of beauty and his sense of pathos. And 
yet neither passage has any trace of what he calls the 
" sin of grandiloquence, or tall -talking." The first is the 
end of the Kiclclehurys on the Rhine : — 

" The next morning we had passed by the rocks and towers, 
the old familiar landscapes, the gleaming towers by the river- 
side, and the green vineyards combed along the hills ; and 
when I woke up, it was at a great hotel at Cologne, and it 
was not sunrise yet. Deutz lay opposite, and over Deutz the 
dusky sky was reddened. The hills were veiled in the mist 
13 8 



290 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

and the gray. The gray river flowed underneath us; the 
steamers were roosting along the quays, a light keeping watch 
in the cabins here and there, and its reflection quivering in 
the water. As I look, the sky-line towards the east grows 
redder and redder. A long troop of gray horsemen winds 
down the river road, and passes over the bridge of boats. 
You might take them for ghosts, those gray horsemen, so 
shadowy do they look ; but you hear the trample of their 
hoofs as they pass over the planks. Every minute the dawn 
twinkles up into the twilight; and over Deutz the heaven 
blushes brighter. The quays begin to fill with men ; the 
carts begin to creak and rattle ; and wake the sleeping 
echoes. Ding, ding, ding, the steamers' bells begin to ring ; 
the people on board to stir and wake ; the lights may be 
extinguished, and take their turn of sleep ; the active boats 
shake themselves, and push out into the river ; the great 
bridge opens, and gives them passage ; the church-bells of 
the city begin to clink ; the cavalry trumpets blow from the 
opposite bank ; the sailor is at the wheel, the porter at his 
burden, the soldier at his musket, and the priest at his 

prayers And lo! in a flash of crimson splendor, 

with blazing scarlet clouds running before his chariot, and 
heralding his majestic approach, God's sun rises upon the 
world, and all nature wakens and brightens. O glorious 
spectacle of light and life ! O beatific symbol of Power, 
Love, Joy, Beauty I Let us look at thee with humble won- 
der, and thankfully acknowledge and adore. What gracious 
forethought is it, — what generous and loving provision, that 
deigns to prepare for our eyes and to soothe our hearts with 
such a splendid morning festival ! For these magnificent 
bounties of Heaven to us, let us be thankful, even that we 
can feel thankful (for thanks surely is the noblest efibrt, as it 
is the greatest delight, of the gentle soul) ; and so, a grace 

for this feast, let all say who partake of it See ! the 

mist clears ofi* Drachenfels, and it looks out from the distance, 
and bids us a friendly farewell." 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 291 

Our second quotation describes Esmond at his mother's 
grave, — one of the most deeply affecting pieces of writ 
ing in the language : — 

" Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, 
and saw, amidst a thousand black crosses, casting their shad- 
ows across the grassy mounds, that particular one which 
marked his mother's resting-place. Many more of those poor 
creatures that lay there had adopted that same name with 
which sorrow had rebaptized her, and which fondly seemed 
to hint their individual story of love and gi^ef. He fancied 
her, in tears and darkness, kneeling at the foot of her cross, 
under which her cares were buried. Surely he knelt down, 
and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so much as in 
awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her), and 
in pity for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been 
made to suffer. To this cross she brought them; for this 
heavenly bridegroom she exchanged the husband who had 
wooed her, the traitor who had left her. A thousand such 
hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of 
the grass over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat. 
A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping 
sister's bedside (so fresh made, that the spring had scarce 
had time to spin a coverlid for it) ; beyond the cemetery 
walls you had gUmpses of life and the world, and the spires 
and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof op- 
posite, and Ut first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, 
whence it flew away presently with a leaf in its mouth : then 
came a sound of chanting, from the chapel of the sisters hard 
by : others had long since filled the place which poor Mary 
Magdalene once had there, were kneeling at the same stall 
and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her 
stricken heart had found consolation. Might she sleep in 
peace, — might she sleep in peace ; and we, too, when our 
struggles and pains are over ! But the earth is the Lord's as 
the heaven is; we are ahke his creatures here and yonder. 
I took a little flower off the hillock and kissed it, and went 



292 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

my way like tlie bird that had just lighted on the cross by 
me, back into the world again. Silent receptacle of death ! 
tranquil depth of calm, out of reach of tempest and trouble. 
I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, and tread- 
ing amidst the bones of shipwrecks." 

Looking at Mr. Thackeray's writings as a whole, he 
would be more truthfully described as a sentimentalist 
than as a cynic. Even when the necessities of his story 
compel him to draw bad characters, he gives them as 
much good as he can. We don't remember in his novels 
any utterly unredeemed scoundrel except Sir Francis 
Clavering. Even Lord Steyne has something like gen- 
uine sympathy with Major Pendennis's grief at the illness 
of his nephew. And if reproof is the main burden of 
his discourse, we must remember that to reprove, not to 
praise, is the business of the preacher. Still further, if 
his reproof appears sometimes unduly severe, we must 
remember that such severity may spring from a belief 
that better things are possible. Here lies the secret of 
Thackeray's seeming bitterness. His nature was, in the 
words of the critic in Le Temps ^ ^'furieuse (T avoir ete 
desappointeeJ^ He condemns sternly men as they often 
are, because he had a high ideal of what they might be. 
The feeling of this contrast runs through all his writings. 
" He could not have painted Vanity Fair as he has, un- 
less Eden had been shining brightly before his eyes." * 
And this contrast could never have been felt, the glories 
of Eden could never have been seen, by the mere satirist 
or by the misanthrope. It has been often urged against 
him that he does not make us think better of our fellow- 
men. No, truly. But he does what is far greater than 

* Essays by George Brimley. Second edition. Cambridge, 1860. 
4 "collection of singularly good critical papers. 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 293 

this, — he makes us think worse of ourselves. There is 
no great necessity that we should think well of other 
people ; there is the utmost necessity that we should 
know ourselves in our every fault and weakness; and 
such knowledge his writings will supply. 

In Mr. Hannay's Memoir,t which we have read with 
admiration and pleasure, a letter from Thackeray is 
quoted, very illustrative of this view of his character: 
" I hate Juvenal ; I mean, I think him a truculent brute, 
and I love Horace better than you do, and rate Churchill 
much lower ; and as for Swift, you have n't made me 
alter my opinion. I admire, or rather admit, his power 
as much as you do ; but I don't admire that kind of 
power so much as I did fifteen years ago, or twenty 
shall we say. Love is a higher intellectual exercise than 
hatred'' We think the terrible Dean had love as well 
as hate strong within him, and none the worse in that it 
was more special than general ; " I like Tom, Dick, and 
Harry," he used to say ; " I hate the race " ; but nothing 
can be more characteristic of Thackeray than this judg- 
ment. Love was the central necessity of his understand- 
ing as well as of his affections ; it was his fulfilling of 
the law ; and unlike the Dean, he could love Tom, and 
also like and pity as well as rebuke the race. 

Mr. Thackeray has not written any history formally 
so called. But it is known that he purposed doing so, 
and in Esmond and the Lectures he has given us much 
of the real essence of history. The Saturday Review^ 
however, in a recent article, has announced that this was 
a mistake ; that history was not his line. Such a decision 
is rather startling. In one or two instances of historical 

t A Brief Memoir of the late Mr. Thackeray. By James Hannay. 

Edinburgh, 1864. 



294 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

representation, Mr. Thackeray may have failed. Johnson 
and Richardson do not appear in the Virginians with 
much effect. But surely in the great majority of in- 
stances, he has been eminently successful. Horace Wal- 
pole's letter in the Virginians^ the fictitious ' Spectator'' 
in Esmond^ are very felicitous literary imitations. Good- 
natured trooper Steele comforting the boy in the lonely 
country-house ; Addison, serene and dignified, " with ever 
so slight a touch of merum in his voice " occasionally ; 
Bolingbroke, with a good deal of merum in his voice, 
talking reckless Jacobitism at the dinner at General 
Webbe's, are wonderful portraits. And, though the es- 
timate of Marlborough's character may be disputed, the 
power with which that character is represented cannot 
be questioned. But the historical genius displayed in 
Esmo7id goes beyond this. We know of no history in 
which the intrigues and confusion of parties at the death 
of Queen Anne are sketched so firmly as in the third 
volume of that work ; in fact, a more thorough historical 
novel was never written. It is not loaded with historical 
learning ; and yet it is most truly, though or rather be- 
cause unpretendingly, a complete representation of the 
time. It reads like a veritable memoir. And it will 
hardly be disputed, that a good historical novel cannot 
be written save by one possessed of great historical 
powers. What are the qualities necessary to a histo- 
rian ? Knowledge, love of truth, insight into human 
nature, imagination to make alive before him the times 
of which he writes. All these Mr. Thackeray had. His 
knowledge was accurate and minute, — indeed, he could 
not have written save of what he knew well ; a love of 
truth was his main characteristic ; for insight into human 
nature he ranks second to Shakespeare alone ; and, while 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 295 

he wanted that highest creative imagination which makes 
the poet, he had precisely that secondary imagination 
which serves the historian, which can realize the past 
and make the distant near. Had he been allowed to 
carry out his cherished design of recording the reign 
of Queen Anne, a great gap in the history of our coun- 
try would have been filled up by one of the most re- 
markable books in the language. We might have had 
less than is usual of the " dignity of history," of battles 
and statutes and treaties ; but we should have had more 
of human nature, — the actors in the drama would have 
been brought before us living and moving, their passions 
and hidden motives made clear; the life of England 
would have been sketched by a subtle artist ; the litera- 
ture of England, during a period which this generation 
often talks about, but of which it knows, we suspect, 
very little, would have been presented to us lighted up 
by appreciative and competent criticism. The Saturday 
Reviewer gives a reason for Mr. Thackeray's failure as 
a historian, which will seem strange to those who have 
been accustomed to regard him as a cynic. He was so 
carried away by worth, says this ingenious critic bent on 
fault-finding, and so impatient of all moral obliquity, that 
he could not value fairly the services which had been 
rendered by bad men. And the instance given is that a 
sense of what we owe to the Hanoverian succession was 
not allowed to temper the severity of the estimate given 
of the first two Georges ; — an unfortunate instance, as 
the critic would have discovered had he read the follow- 
ing passage in the lecture on George the Second : — 

" But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pre- 
tender back again. But for his obstinate love of peace, we 
should have had wars which the nation was not stron<2j enough 



296 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

nor united enough to endure. But for his resokite counsels 
and good-humored resistance, we might have had German 
despots attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us ; we should 
have had revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in 
place of a quarter of a century of peace, freedom, and mate- 
rial prosperity, such as the country never enjoyed, until that 
corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute, tipsy cynic, that 
courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, 
patriot, and statesman governed it." 

The truth is, that Mr. Thackeray, while fully appre- 
ciating the blessings of* the Hanoverian succession, knew 
well that the country did not in the least degree owe the 
stability of that succession to the Hanoverian kings, but, 
on the contrary, to that great minister, whose character 
is sketched, in a powerful passage, of which the above 
quotation is a part. In fact, Mr. Thackeray judged no 
man harshly. No attentive student of his works can fail 
to see that he understood the duty of " making allow- 
ance," not less with regard to historical characters, than 
with regard to characters of his own creation. He does 
full justice, for example, to the courage and conduct of 
Marlborough, as to whose moral character the opinion 
of Colonel Esmond is in curious accordance with the 
historical judgment given later to the public by Lord 
Macaulay. 

These " Lectures on the Georges " were made the 
ground of a charge against Mr. Thackeray of disloyalty. 
This charge was urged with peculiar offensiveness by 
certain journals, which insinuated that the failings of 
English kings had been selected as a theme grateful to 
the American audiences who first heard the lectures de- 
livered. Mr. Thackeray felt this charge deeply, and 
repelled it in language which we think worthy to be 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 297 

remembered. At a dinner given to him in Edinburgh, 
in 1857, he said : — 

" I had thought that in these lectures I had spoken in terms 
not of disrespect or unkindness, and in feeHngs and in lan- 
guage not un-English, of her Majesty the Queen ; and wher- 
ever I have had to mention her name, whether it was upon 
the banks of the Clyde or upon those of the Mississippi, 
whether it was in New England or in Old England, whether 
it was in some great hall in London to the artisans of the 
suburbs of the metropolis, or to the politer audiences of the 
western end, — wherever I had to mention her name, it was 
received with shouts of applause, and with the most hearty 
cheers. And why was this ? It was not on account of the 
speaker ; it was on account of the truth ; it was because the 
English and the Americans — the people of New Orleans a 
year ago, the people of Aberdeen a week ago — all received 
and acknowledged with due allegiance the great claims to 
honor which that lady has who worthily holds that great and 
awful situation which our Queen occupies. It is my loyalty 
that is called in question, and it is my loyalty that I am try- 
ing to plead to you. Suppose, for example, in America, — in 
Philadelphia or in New York, — that I had spoken about 
George IV. in terms of praise and affected reverence, do you 
believe they would have hailed his name with cheers, or have 
heard it with anything like respect ? They would have 
laughed in my face if I had so spoken of him. They know 
what I know and you know, and what numbers of squeamish 
loyalists who affect to cry out against my lectures know, that 
that man's life was not a good life, — that that king was not 
such a king as we ought to love, or regard, or honor. And I 
believe, for my part, that, in speaking the truth, as we hold it, 
of a bad sovereign, we are paying no disrespect at all to a 
good one. Far fi*om it. On the contrary, we degrade our 
own honor and the Sovereign's by unduly and unjustly prais- 
ing him ; and the mere slaverer and flatterer is one who comes 
forward, as it were, with flash notes, and pays with false coin 
13* 



298 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

his tribute to Caesar. I don't disguise that I feel somehow on 
my trial here for loyalty, for honest English feeling." 

The judgment pronounced by the accomplished Scotch 
judge who presided at this dinner-trial, a man far re- 
moved, both by tastes and position, from any sympathy 
with vulgar popularity-hunting, will be accepted by every 
candid person as just : — 

" I don't," said Lord Neaves, " for my part, regret if there 
are some painful truths told in these lectures to those who had 
before reposed in the pleasing delusion that everything royal 
was immaculate. I am not sorry that some of the false trap- 
pings of royalty or of a court life should be stripped off. We 
live under a Sovereign whose conduct, both public and pri- 
vate, is so unexceptionable, that we can afford to look all the 
facts connected with it in the face ; and woe be to the country 
or to the crown when the voice of truth shall be stifled as to 
any such matters, or when the only tongue that is allowed to 
be heard is that of flattery." 

It was said of Fontenelle that he had as good a heart as 
could be made out of brains. Adapting the observation, 
we may say of Thackeray that he was as good a poet as 
could be made out of brains. The highest gifts of the 
poet of course he wanted. His imagination, to take 
Ruskin's distinction, was more penetrative than associ- 
ative or contemplative. His mind was too much occupied 
with realities for persistent ideal work. But manliness 
and common sense, combined with a perfect mastery of 
language, go a long way at least to the making of very 
excellent verses. More than this, he had the sensibility, 
the feeling of time and of numbers essential to versify- 
ing ; and his mind fulfilled the condition required by our 
greatest living poet : — 

*' Clear and bright it should be ever, 
Flowing like a crystal river." 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 299 

His verse-making was a sort of pleasaunce, — a flower- 
garden in the midst of spacious policies. It was the 
ornamentation of his intellect. His ballads do not per- 
haps show poetic feeling more profound than is possessed 
by many men ; they derive, for the most part, their charm 
from the same high qualities as mark his prose, with the 
attraction of music and rhyme superadded. Writing them 
seems to have given him real pleasure. The law of self- 
imposed restraint, of making the thought often wait upon 
the sound, necessary in rhythmical composition, rather 
than, as in prose, the sound upon the sense, — this meas- 
uring of feeling and of expression had plainly a great 
charm for his rich and docile genius. His verses give 
one the idea of having been a great delight to himself, 
like humming a favorite air ; there is no trace of effort, 
and yet the trick of the verse is perfect. His rhymes 
are often as good as Swift's and Hood's. This feeling of 
enjoyment, as also the abounding fertility in strange 
rhymes, is very marked in the White Squall ; and hardly 
less in the ease and gayety of Peg of Limavaddy. Take, 
for instance, the description of the roadside inn where 
Peg dispenses liquor : — 

" Limavaddy inn 's 

But a humble baithouse, 
Where you may procure 

Whiskey and potatoes ; 
Landlord at the door 

Gives a smiling welcome 
To the shivering wights 

Who to his hotel come. 
Landlady within 

Sits and knits a stocking, 
With a wary foot 

Baby's cradle rocking. 
To the chimney nook, 

Having found admittance, 



300 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

There I watch a pup 

Playing with two kittens ; 
(Playing round the fire, 

Which of blazing turf is, 
Roaring to the poj; 

Which bubbles with the murphies) 
And the cradled babe 

Fond the mother nursed it, 
Singing it a song 

As she twists the worsted ! '' 

Peg herself and her laugh, — 

" Such a silver peal ! 

In the meadows listening, 
You who 've heard the bells 

Ringing to a christening ; 
You who ever heard 

Caradori pretty, 
Smiling like an angel. 

Singing * Giovinetti ' ; 
Fancy Peggy's laugh, 

Sweet, and clear, and cheerful, 
At my pantaloons 

With half a pint of beer full! 
See her as she moves ! 

Scarce the ground she touches, 
Airy as a fay. 

Graceful as a duchess ; 
Bare her rounded arm, 

Bare her little leg is, 
Vestris never showed 

Ankles like to Peggy's ; 
Braided is her hair. 

Soft her look and modest. 
Slim her little waist 

Comfortably bodiced." 

In a similar light and graceful style are the Cane-Bot- 
tomed Chair, Piscator and Piscatrix, the Carmen Lilli- 
ense, etc.; and all the Lyra Hibernica, especially the 
rollicking Battle of Limerick, are rich in Irish absurdity. 
That compact little epic, the Chronicle of the Drum, the 



THACKERAY^S LITERARY CAREER. 301 

well-known Bouillabaisse, and At the Church Gate, — 
the first literary effort of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, — seem 
to us in their various styles to rise into the region of real 
poetry. The Chronicle of the Drum is a grand martial 
composition, and a picture of the feelings of the French 
soldiery which strikes on us at once as certainly true. 
The Ballads of Pleaceman X. are unique in literature, — 
as startlingly original as Tam O'Shanter. Jacob Hom- 
nium's Hoss is perhaps the most amusing, the Found- 
ling of Shoreditch the most serious ; but through them 
all there runs a current of good sense, good feeling, and 
quaint fun which makes them most pleasant reading. 
They remind one somehow of John Gilpin, — indeed 
there is often the same playful fancy and delicate pen- 
siveness in Thackeray as in Cowper. We should like to 
quote many of these ; but we give in preference Miss 
Tickletoby's ballad on King Canute, long though it be, 
because it is not included in the collected ballads, and 
has not, we fear, obtained great popularity by being in- 
corporated into Rebecca and Rowena^ — a rendering of 
poetical justice less generally read than it should be : — 

KING CANUTE. 

King Cannte was weary-hearted; he had reigned for years a score; 
Battling, struggling, pushing, fighting, killing much and robbing more. 
And he thought upon his actions, walking by the wild sea-shore. 

'Twixt the chancellor and bishop walked the king with steps sedate, 
Chamberlains and grooms came after, silver sticks and gold sticks great, 
Chaplains, aides-de-camp, and pages, — all the officers of state. 

Sliding after like his shadow, pausing when he chose to pause ; 

If a frown his face contracted, straight the courtiers dropped their jaws 

If to laugh the king was minded, out they burst in loud hee-haws. 

But that day a something vexed him, that was clear to old and young, 
Thrice his grace had yawned at table, when his favorite gleeman sung, 
Once the queen would have consoled him, but he bade her hold her 
tongue. 



302 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

" SomethiDg ails my gracious master," cried the keeper of the seal; 
" Sure, my lord, it is the lampreys served at dinner, or the veal ! '* 
" Psha! " exclaimed the angry monarch, " keeper, 't is not that I feel. 

" 'T is the heart and not the dinner, fool, that doth my rest'impair; 
Can a king be great as I am, prithee, and yet know no care ? 
0, I 'm sick, and tired, and weary." — Some one cried, " The king's 
arm-chair!" 

Then towards the lackeys turning, quick my lord the keeper nodded, 
Straight the king's great chair was brought him, by two footmen able 

bodied, 
Languidly he sank into it : it was comfortably wadded. 

" Leading on my fierce companions," cried he, " over storm and brine, 
I have fought and I have conquered ! Where was glory like to mine ! " 
Loudly all the courtiers echoed, " Where is glory like to thine? " 

" What avail me all my kingdoms ? Weary am I now, and old. 
Those fair sons I have begotten long to see me dead and cold; 
Would I were, and quiet buried, underneath the silent mould ! 

" remorse, the writhing serpent! at my bosom tears and bites: 
Horrid, horrid things I look on, though I put .out all the lights ; 
Ghosts of ghastly recollections troop about- my bed of nights. • 

" Cities burning, convents blazing, red with sacrilegious fires ; 
Mothers weeping, virgins screaming, vainly for their slaughtered sires — " 
— " Such a tender conscience," cries the bishop, " every one admires." 

*' But for such unpleasant bygones, cease, my gracious lord, to search. 
They 're forgotten and forgiven by our holy Mother Church ; 
Never, never does she leave her benefactors in the lurch. 

"Look! the land is crowned with minsters, which your Grace's bounty 

raised ; 
Abbeys filled with holy men, where you and heaven are daily praised ; 
You^ my lord, to think of dying? on my conscience, I'm amazed ! " 

" Nay, I feel," replied King Canute, " that my end is drawing near " ; 
" Don't say so," exclaimed the courtiers (striving each to squeeze a 

tear), 
" Sure your Grace is strong and lusty, and may live this fifty year." 

" Live these fifty years ! " the bishop roared, with actions made to suit, 
" Are you mad, my good lord keeper, thus to speak of King Canute ' 
Men have lived a thousand years, and sure his Majesty will do 't. 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 303 

" Adam, Enoch, Lamech, Canan, Mahaleel, Methusela, 

Lived nine hundred years apiece, and may n't the king as well as they ? " 

*' Fervently," exclaimed the keeper, " fervently, I trust he may." 

" He to die," resumed the bishop. " He a mortal like to us ? 
Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus ; 
Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus. 

" With his wondrous skill in healing ne'er a doctor can compete. 
Loathsome lepers, if he touch them, start up clean upon their feet; 
Surely he could raise the dead up, did his Highness think it meet. 

"Did not once the Jewish captain stay the sun upon the hill, 
And, the while he slew the foemen, bid the silver moon stand still ? 
So, no doubt, could gracious Canute, if it were his sacred will." 

" Might I stay the sun above us, good Sir Bishop? " Canute cried; 
" Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride ? 
If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide. 

" Will the advancing waves obey me, bishop, if I make the sign ? " 
Said the bishop, bowing lowly, " Land and sea, my lord, are thine." 
Canute turned towards the ocean, — " Back ! " he said, " thou foaming 
brine. 

" From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat ; 
Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master's seat; 
Ocean, be thou still ! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet! '* 

But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar. 

And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore; 

Back the keeper and the bishop, back the king and courtiers bore. 

And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay. 
But alone to praise and worship that which earth and seas obey ; 
And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day. 
King Canute is dead and gone : parasites exist alway. 

We must say a few words on his merits as an artist 
and a critic of art. We can hardly agree with those who 
hold that he failed as an artist, and then took to his pen. 
There is no proof of failure ; his art accomplishes all he 
sets it to. Had he, instead of being a gentleman's son, 
brought up at the Charter-house and Cambridge, been 
born in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, and 



304 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

apprenticed, let us say, when thirteen years old, to Eaim- 
bach the engraver, we might have had another, and in 
some ways a subtler Hogarth. He draws well ; his 
mouths and noses, his feet, his children's heads, all his 
ugly and queer "mugs," are wonderful for expression 
and good drawing. With beauty of man or woman he is 
not so happy ; but his fun is, we think, even more 
abounding and funnier in his cuts than in his words. 
The love of fun in him was something quite peculiar. 
Some writers have been more witty ; a few have had a 
more delicate humor ; but none, we think, have had more 
of that genial quality which is described by the homely 
word/wTi. It lay partly in imitation, as in the " Novels 
by Eminent Hands." There were few things more sin- 
gular in his intellectual organization than the coincidence 
of absolute originality of thought and style with exquisite 
mimetic power. But it oftener showed itself in a pure 
love of nonsense, — only nonsense of the highest order. 
He was very fond of abandoning himself to this temper ; 
witness the " Story a la Mode " in the Cornhill, some of 
the reality-giving touches in which would have done 
credit to Gulliver. Major Gahagan is far funnier than 
Baron Munchausen ; and where is there more exquisite 
nonsense than " The Rose and the Ring," with the " little 
beggar baby that laughed and sang as droll as may be ? " 
There is much of this spirit in his ballads,"^ especially, as 

* We subjoin an astonishing piece of nonsense, — a species of song, 
or ditty, which he chanted, we believe, extempore [in singing, each 
line to be repeated twice] : — 

LITTLE BILLEE. 
There were 3 sailors in Bristol city, 
Who took a boat and went to sea. 

But first with beef and captain's biscuit, 
And pickled pork they loaded she. 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 305 

we have already said, the series by Pleaceman X. ; but 
we are inclined to think that it finds most scope in his 

There was guzzling Jack and gorging Jinimy, 
And the youngest he was little Billee. 

Now very soon, they were so greedy, 
They did n't leave not one split pea. 

Says guzzling Jack to gorging Jimmy, 
"I am extremely hungaree.'* 

Says gorging Jim to guzzling Jacky, 

*' We have no provisions, so we must eat we.'* 

Says guzzling Jack to gorging Jimmy, 
** gorging Jim, what a fool you be ! 

" There 's little Bill is young and tender, 
We 're old and tough, so let 's eat he." 

*' Bill, we 're going to kill and eat you, 
So undo the collar of your chemie.'* 

When Bill received this infumation 
He used his pocket-handkerchie. 

" let me say my catechism. 

As my poor mammy taught to me." 

" Make haste, make haste," says guzzling Jacky, 
While Jim pulled out his snickersnee. 

So Bill went up the maintop-gallant mast. 
Where down he fell on his bended knee. 

He scarce had come to the Twelfth Commandment, 
When up he jumps, " There 's land, I see. 

" There 's Jerusalem and Madagascar, 
And North and South Amerikee. 

" There 's the British fleet a riding at anchor, 
With Admiral Nelson, K. C. B." 

So when they came to the admiral's vessel, 
He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee. 

But as for little Bill, he made him 
The captain of a seventy-three. 



306 THACKERAY'S LITERAEY CAREER. 

drawings. We well remember our surprise on coming 
upon some of his earlier works for Punch, Best of all 
was an impressive series illustrative of the following pas- 
sage in the Times of December 7, 1843 : " The agents 
of the tract societies have lately had recourse to a new 
method of introducing their tracts into Cadiz. The tracts 
were put into glass bottles securely corked ; and, taking 
advantage of the tide flowing into the harbor, they were 
committed to the waves, on whose surface they floated 
towards the town, where the inhabitants eagerly took them 
up on their arriving at the shore. The bottles were then 
uncorked, and the tracts they contain are supposed to have 
been read with much interest." The purpose of the se- 
ries is to hold up to public odium the Dissenting tract- 
smuggler, — Tractistero dissentero contrabandistero. The 
first cut represents a sailor, "thirsty as the seaman nat- 
urally is," rushing through the surf to seize the bottle 
which has been bobbing towards him. " Sherry, per- 
haps," he exclaims to himself and his friend. Second 
cut ; the thirsty expectant has the bottle in position, and 
is drawing the cork, another mariner, and a little won- 
dering boy, capitally drawn, looking on. " Rum, I hope," 
is the thought of each. Lastly we have the awful result : 
our friend holds up on the corkscrew to his companion 
and the universe " a Spanish translation of the Cow-boy 
of Kensington Common," with an indignant " Tracts, by 
jingo ! " Then there is John Balliol, in Miss TicUetohy^s 
Lectures, "cutting" into England on a ragged sheltie, 
which is trotting like a maniac over a series of boulders, 
sorely discomposing the rider, whose kilt is of the shortest. 
Even better is the cut illustrative of the ballad of " King 
Canute," the king and his courtiers on the shore, with 
bathing-machines and the Union-jack in the distance ; 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 307 

and a most preposterous representation of the non Angli 
sed Angeli story. We wish Mr. Thackeray's excellent 
friends, the proprietors of Punch, would reprint all his 
odds and ends, with their woodcuts. They will get the 
laughter and gratitude of mankind if they do. 

He is, as far as we recollect, the only great author 
who illustrated his own works. This gives a singular 
completeness to the result. When his pen has said its 
say, then comes his pencil and adds its own felicity. 
Take the original edition of the Book of Snobs, all 
those delicious Christmas little quartos, especially Mrs. 
Perkins s Ball and the Rose and the Ring (one of the 
most perfectly realized ideas we know of), and see how 
complete is the duet between the eye and the mind, 
between word and figure. There is an etching in the 
Paris Sketch-Book which better deserves to be called 
" high art " than most of the class so called. It is Maj- 
esty in the person of " Le Grand Monarque" in and 
stripped of its externals, which are there also by them- 
selves. The lean and slippered old pantaloon is tottering 
peevishly on his staff, his other hand in his waistcoat- 
pocket ; his head absolutely bald ; his whole aspect piti- 
able and forlorn, querulous and absurd. To his left is his 
royal self, in all his glory of high-heeled boots, three- 
storied flowing wig, his orders, and sword, and all his 
" dread magnificence," as we know him in his pictures ; 
on his right we behold, and somehow feel as if the old 
creature, too, is in awe of them, — his clothes, per se, — 
the " properties " of the great European actor, set in- 
geniously up, and looking as grand and much steadier 
than with him inside. The idea and the execution are 
full of genius. The frontispiece of the same book con- 
tains a study of Heads, than which Hogarth certainly 



608 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 



never did anything better. These explanatory lines are 
below the picture : — 

"Number 1 *s an ancient Carlist; number 3 a Paris artist; 
Gloomily there stands between them number 2, a Bonapartist; 
In the middle is King Louis Philip standing at his ease, 
Guarded by a loyal grocer, and a serjeant of police; 

4 's the people in a passion ; 6 a priest of pious mien ; 

5 a gentleman of fashion copied from a magazine." 

No words can do justice to the truth and power of this 
group of characters : it gives a history of France during 
the Orleans dynasty. 

We give below a fac-simile of a drawing sent by him to 
a friend, with the following note : — 

" Behold a drawing instead of a letter. I Ve been thinking 
of writing you a beautiful one ever so long, but, etc., etc. And 




THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 309 

instead of doing my duty this morning, I began this here draw- 
ing, and will pay your debt some other day, — no, part of your 
debt. I intend to owe the rest, and like to owe it, and think 
I 'm sincerely grateful to you always, my dear good friends. 

" W. M. T." 

This drawing is a good specimen of his work ; it tells 
its own story, as every drawing should. Here is the 
great lexicographer, with his ponderous, shuffling tread, 
his thick lips, his head bent down, his book close to his 
purblind eyes, himself totus in illo, reading as he fed, 
greedily and fast. Beside him simpers the clumsy and in- 
spired Oliver, in his new plum-colored coat ; his eyes bent 
down in an ecstasy of delight, for is he not far prouder 
of his visage, and such a visage ! and of his coat, than 
of his artless genius ? We all know about that coat, 
and how Mr. Filby never got paid for it. There he 
is behind his window in sartorial posture, his uplifted 
goose arrested, his eye following wistfully, and not with- 
out a sense of glory and dread, that coat and man. His 
journeyman is grinning at him ; he is paid weekly, and 
has no risk. And then what a genuine bit of Thackeray, 
the street boy and his dear little admiring sister! — there 
they are, stepping out in mimicry of the great two. Ob- 
serve the careful, honest work, and how the turn of the 
left foot of the light-hearted and heeled gamin, — whose 
toes, much innocent of shoes, have a prehensile look 
about them, suggestive of the Huxley grandfather, — is 
corrected, as also Dr. Goldsmith's. He could never let 
anything remain if it was untrue. 

It would not be easy to imagine better criticisms of 
art than those from Mr. Thackeray's hand in Fraser, in 
Punch, in a kindly and beautiful paper on our inimitable 
John Leech in the Quarterly^ in a Roundabout on Rubens, 



310 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

and throughout his stories, — especially the Newcomes^ — 
wherever art comes in. He touches the matter to the 
quick, — and touches nothing else; and, while sensitive 
to all true and great art, he detects and detests all that is 
false or mean. He is not so imaginative, not so impas- 
sioned and glorious, not so amazing in illustration, and in 
painting better than pictures, as Mr. Ruskin, who has 
done more for art and its true interests than all other 
writers. But he is more to be trusted because he is 
more objective, more cool, more critical in the true sense. 
He sees everything by the lumen siccum, though it by no 
means follows that he does not feel as well as see ; but 
here, as in everything else, his art " has its seat in reason, 
and is judicious." Here is his description of Turner's 
Old Temeraire, from a paper on the Royal Academy in 
Fraser, We can give it no higher praise than that it 
keeps its own with Ruskin's : — 

" I must request you to turn your attention to a noble river 
piece, by J. W. M. Turner, Esq., R. A., ' The Fighting Te- 
meraire,' as grand a painting as ever figured on the walls of 
any academy, or came from the easel of any painter. The old 
Temeraire is dragged to her last home by a little, spiteful, 
diabolical steamer. A mighty red sun, amidst a host of flaring 
clouds, sinks to rest on one side of the picture, and illumines a 
river that seems interminable, and a countless navy that fades 
away into such a wonderful distance as never was painted be- 
fore. The little demon of a steamer is belching out a volume 
(why do I say a volume ? not a hundred volumes could express 
it) of foul, lurid, red-hot, malignant smoke, paddling furiously, 
and lashing up the water round about it ; while behind it (a 
cold, gray moon looking down on it), slow, sad, and majestic, 
follows the brave old ship, with death, as it were, written on 

her It Is absurd, you will say (and with a great deal of 

reason), for TItmarsh or any other Briton to grow so poHtically 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 311 

enthusiastic about a four-foot canvas, representing a ship, a 
steamer, a river, and a sunset. But herein surely lies the 
power of the great artist. He makes you see and think of a 
great deal more than the objects before you ; he knows how to 
soothe or to intoxicate, to fire or to depress, by a few notes, or 
forms, or colors, of which we cannot trace the effect to the 
source, but only acknowledge the power. I recollect some 
years ago, at the theatre at Weimar, hearing Beethoven's 
* Battle of Vittoria,' in which, amidst a storm of glorious music, 
the air of * God save the King ' was introduced. The very 
instant it begun, every Englishman in the house was bolt up- 
right, and so stood reverently until the air was played out. 
Why so ? From some such thrill of excitement as makes us 
glow and rejoice over Mr. Turner and his * Fighting Teme- 
raire,' which I am sure, when the art of translating colors into 
poetry or music shall be discovered, will be found to be a 
magnificent national ode or piece of music." 

When speaking of The Slave Ship by the same amaz- 
ing artist, be says, with delightful naivete: "I don't know 
whether it is sublime or ridiculous," — a characteristic 
instance of his outspoken truthfulness ; and he lays it 
down that the " first quality of an artist is to have a large 
heart," believing that all art, all imaginative work of the 
highest order, must originate in and be addressed to the 
best powers of the soul, must " submit the shows of things 
to the desires of the mind." 

Mr. Trollope says, in the Cornhill for this February, 
*^ that which the world will most want to know of Thack- 
eray is the effect which his writings have produced." In 
one sense of the word, the world is not likely ever to find 
this out ; it is a matter which each man must determine 
for himself. But the world can perhaps ascertain what 
special services Mr. Thackeray has rendered ; and it is 
this probably which Mr. Trollope means. His great ser- 



312 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

vice has been in his exposure of the prevailing faults of 
his time. Among the foremost are the faults of affec- 
tation and pretence, but there is one yet more grievous 
than these, — the sceptical spirit of the age. This he has 
depicted in the gentlest and saddest of all his books, 
Pendennis : — 

*' And it will be seen that the lamentable stage to which his 
logic at present has brought him" (Arthur Pendennis) "is 
one of general scepticism and sneering acquiescence in the 
world as it is ; or if you like so to call it, a belief qualified 

with scorn in all things extant And to what does this 

easy and sceptical life lead a man ? Friend Arthur was a 
Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the wilderness shouting 
to the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith 
to the preacher's awful accents and denunciations of wrath or 
woe or salvation ; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his 
sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go 
home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and 
audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek 
song-book babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and 
fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism 
lead ? It leads a man to a shameful lonehness and selfishness, 
so to speak, — the more shameful, because it is so good-humored 
and conscienceless and serene. Conscience ! What is con- 
science ? Why accept remorse ? What is public or private 
faith ? Mythuses alike enveloped in enormous tradition." 

The delineation is not a pleasant one, but it is true. 
The feeling hardly deserves to be called scepticism ; it is 
rather a calm indifferentism, a putting aside of all things 
sacred. And as the Sadducees of Judaea were, on the 
whole, better men than the Pharisees, so this modern 
Sadducean feeling prevails not only among the cultivated 
classes, but among those conspicuously honorable and 
upright. These men, in fact, want spiritual guides and 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 313 

teachers. The clergy do not supply this want ; most of 
them refuse to acknowledge its existence ; Mr. Thackeray, 
with his fearless truthfulness, sees it and tells it. To 
cure it is not within his province. As a lay-preacher, 
only the secondary principles of morality are at his com- 
mand. " Be each, pray God, a gentleman," is his highest 
sanction. But though he cannot tell the afflicted whither 
to turn, it is no slight thing to have laid bare the disorder 
from which so many suffer, and which all, with culpable 
cowardice, study to conceal. And he does more than lay 
bare the disorder ; he convinces us how serious it is. He 
does this by showing us its evil effect on a good and 
kindly nature. No teaching can be more impressive than 
the contrast between Pendennis under the influence of 
this sceptical spirit, and Warrington, over whom, crushed 
as he is by hopeless misfortune, it has no power. 

The minor vices of affectation and pretension he assails 
directly. To do this was his especial mission from the first. 
What success may have attended his efforts we cannot 
certainly tell. It is to be feared, however, that, despite 
his teaching, snobs, like poverty, will never cease out of 
the land. But all who feel guilty, — and every one of 
us is guilty more or less, — and who desire to amend, 
should use the means : the " Book of Snobs " should be 
read carefully at least once a year. His was not the hor- 
tatory method. He had no notion that much could be 
done by telhng people to be good. He found it more 
telling to show that by being otherwise they were in dan- 
ger of becoming unhappy, ridiculous, and contemptible. 
Yet he did not altogether neglect positive teaching. 
Many passages might be taken from his works — even 
from the remorseless " Book of Snobs" itself — which in- 
culcate the beauty of goodness ; and the whole tendency 
14 



314 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

of his writings, from the first to the last line he penned 
during a long and active literary life, has invariably been 
to inspire reverence for manliness and purity and truth. 
And to sum up all, in representing after his measure the 
characteristics of the age, Mr. Thackeray has discharged 
one of the highest functions of a writer. His keen in- 
sight into modern life has enabled him to show his read- 
ers that life fully ; his honesty and high tone of mind has 
enabled him to do this truly. Hence he is the healthiest 
of writers. In his pages we find no false stimulus, no 
pernicious ideals, no vulgar aims. We are led to look at 
things as they really are, and to rest satisfied with our 
place among them. Each man learns that he can do 
much if he preserves moderation ; that if he goes beyond 
his proper sphere he is good for nothing. He teaches us 
to find a fitting field for action in our peculiar studies or 
business, to reap lasting happiness in the affections which 
are common to all. Our vague longings are quieted ; 
our foolish ambitions checked ; we are soothed into con- 
tentment with obscurity, — - encouraged in an honest de- 
termination to do our duty. 

A " Roundabout Paper " on the theme Nil nisi bonum 
concludes thus : — 

" Here are two literary men gone to their account ; and, 
laus Deo, as far as we know, it is fair, and open, and clean. 
Here is no need of apologies for shortcomings, or explanations 
of vices which would have been virtues but for unavoidable, 
etc. Here are two examples of men most differently gifted : 
each pursuing his calling ; each speaking his truth as God bade 
him ; each honest in his life ; just and Irreproachable In his deal- 
ings ; dear to his friends ; honored by his country ; beloved at 
his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of both to give in- 
calculable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks 
them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 315 

It may not be our chance, brother-scribe, to be endowed with 
such merit or rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of 
these men are rewards paid to our service. We may not win 
the baton or epaulettes ; but God give us strength to guard 
the honor of the flag 1 " 

The prayer was granted : he bad strength given him 
always to guard the honor of the flag ; and now his name 
is worthy to be placed beside the names of Washington 
Irving and Lord Macaulay, as of one no whit less de- 
serving the praise of these noble words. 

We have seen no satisfactory portrait of Mr. Thack- 
eray. We like the photographs better than the prints ; 
and we have an old daguerreotype of him without his 
spectacles which is good ; but no photograph can give 
more of a man than is in any one ordinary — often very 
ordinary — look of him ; it is only Sir Joshua and his 
brethren who can paint a man liker than himself. Lau- 
rence's first drawing has much of his thoroughbred look, 
but the head is too much tossed up and vif. The photo- 
graph from the later drawing by the same hand we like 
better : he is alone, and reading with his book close up to 
his eyes. This gives the prodigious size and solidity of 
his head, and the sweet mouth. We have not seen that 
by Mr. Watts, but, if it is as full of powet and delicacy as 
his Tennyson, it will be a comfort. 

Though in no sense a selfish man, he had a wonderful 
interest in himself as an object of study, and nothing could 
be more delightful and unlike anything else than to listen 
to him on himself. He often draws his own likeness in 
his books. In the " Fraserians," by Maclise, in Fraser^ is 
a slight sketch of him in his unknown youth ; and there 
is an excessively funny and not unlike extravaganza of 
him by Doyle or Leech, in the Month, a little short-lived 



316 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

periodical, edited by Albert Smith. He is represented 
lecturing, when certainly he looked his best. We give 
below what is like him in face as well as in more. The 




tired, young, kindly wag is sitting and looking into space, 
his mask and his jester's rod lying idly on his knees. 

The foregoing estimate of his genius must stand in- 
stead of any special portraiture of the man. Yet we 
would mention two leading traits of character traceable, to 
a large extent, in his works, though finding no appropriate 
place in a literary criticism of them. One was the deep 
steady melancholy of his nature. He was fond of tell- 
ing how on one occasion, at Paris, he found himself in a 
great crowded salon ; and looking from the one end across 
the sea of heads, being in Swift's place of calm in a crowd,"^ 
he saw at the other end a strange visage, staring at him 
with an expression of comical woebegoneness. After a 
little he found that this rueful being was himself in the 
mirror. He was not, indeed, morose. He was alive to 
and thankful for every-day blessings, great and small ; for 
the happiness of home, for friendship, for wit and music, 
for beauty of all kinds, for the pleasures of the " faithful 
old gold pen " ; now running into some felicitous ex- 
pression, now playing itself into some droll initial letter ; 
nay, even for the creature comforts. But his persistent 

• '* An inch or two above it." 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 317 

state, especially for the later half of his life, was pro- 
foundly morne^ — there is no other word for it. This 
arose in part from temperament, from a quick sense of 
the littleness and wretchedness of mankind. His keen 
perception of the meanness and vulgarity of the realities 
around him contrasted with the ideal present to his mind 
could produce no other effect. This feeling, embittered 
by disappointment, acting on a harsh and savage nature, 
ended in the sceva indignatio of Swift ; acting on the 
kindly and too sensitive nature of Mr. Thackeray, it led 
only to compassionate sadness. In part, too, this melan- 
choly was the result of private calamities. He alludes to 
these often in his writings, and a knowledge that his sor- 
rows were great is necessary to the perfect appreciation 
of much of his deepest pathos. We allude to them here, 
painful as the subject is, mainly because they have given 
rise to stories, — some quite untrue, some even cruelly 
injurious. The loss of his second child in infancy was 
always an abiding sorrow, — described in the " Hoggarty 
Diamond," in a passage of surpassing tenderness, too sa- 
cred to be severed from its context. A yet keener and 
more constantly present affliction was the illness of his 
wife. He married her in Paris when he was " mewing 
his mighty youth," preparing for the great career which 
awaited him. One likes to think on these early days of 
happiness, when he could draw and write with that loved 
companion by his side : he has himself sketched the pic- 
ture : " The humblest painter, be he ever so poor, may 
have a friend watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sit- 
ting by with her work in her lap^ and with fond smiles 
or talk or silence, cheering his labors." After some years 
of marriage, Mrs. Thackeray caught a fever, brought on 
by imprudent exposure at a time when the effects of such 



318 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

ailments are more than usually lasting both on the system 
and the nerves. She never afterwards recovered so as 
to be able to be with her husband and children. But she 
has been from the first intrusted to the good offices of a 
kind family, tenderly cared for, surrounded with every 
comfort by his unwearied affection. The beautiful lines 
in the ballad of the " Bouillabaisse " are well known : — 

" Ah me ! how quick the days are flitting ! 

I mind me of a time that 's gone, 
When here I 'd sit as now I 'm sitting, 

In this same place, — but not alone. 
A fair young form was nestled near me, 

A dear, dear face looked fondly up, 
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me, 

— There 's no one now to share my cup." 

In one of the latest Roundabouts we have this touching 
confession : " I own for my part that, in reading pages 
which this hand penned formerly, I often lose sight of the 
text under my eyes. It is not the words I see ; but that 
past day ; that by-gone page of life's history ; that tragedy, 
comedy it may be, which our little home-company was 
enacting ; that merry-making which we shared ; that fu- 
neral which we followed ; that bitter, bitter grief which 
we buried/' But all who knew him know well, and love 
to recall, how these sorrows were soothed and his home 
made a place of happiness by his two daughters and his 
mother, who were his perpetual companions, delights, and 
blessings, and whose feeling of inestimable loss now will 
be best borne and comforted by remembering how they 
were everything to him, as he was to them. 

His sense of a higher Power, his reverence and godly 
fear, is felt more than expressed — as indeed it mainly 
should always be — in everything he wrote. It comes 
out at times quite suddenly, and stops at once, in its full 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 319 

Strength. We could readily give many instances of this 
One we give, as it occurs very early, when he was proba- 
bly little more than six-and-twenty ; it is from the paper, 
" Madam Sand and the New Apocalypse." Referring 
to Henri Heine's frightful words, " Dieu qui se meurt,'^ 
" Dieu est mortj' and to the wild godlessness of Spiridion^ 
he thus bursts out : " O awful, awful name of God ! 
Light unbearable ! mystery unfathomable ! vastness im- 
measurable ! Who are these who come forward to ex- 
plain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths 
of the light, and measure the immeasurable vastness to a 
hair ? O name that God's people of old did fear to utter ! 
O light that God's prophet would have perished had he 
seen ! who are these now so familiar with it ? " In ordi- 
nary intercourse the same sudden " Te Deum " would 
occur, always brief and intense, like lightning from a 
cloudless heaven ; he seemed almost ashamed, — not of it, 
but of his giving it expression. 

We cannot resist here recalling one Sunday evening in 
December, when he was walking with two friends along 
the Dean road, to the west of Edinburgh, — one of the no- 
blest outlets to any city. It was a lovely evening, — such 
a sunset as one never forgets ; a rich dark bar of cloud 
hovered over the sun, going down behind the Highland 
hills, lying bathed in amethystine bloom ; between this 
cloud and the hills there was a narrow slip of the pure 
ether, of a tender cowslip color, lucid, and as if it were 
the very body of heaven in its clearness ; every object 
standing out as if etched upon the sky. The northwest 
end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay in 
the heart of this pure radiance, and there a wooden crane, 
used in the quarry below, was so placed as to assume the 
figure of a cross ; there it was, unmistakable, lifted up 



320 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

against the crystalline sky. All three gazed at it silently. 
As they gazed, he gave utterance in a tremulous, gentle, 
and rapid voice, to what all were feeling, in the word 
" Calvary ! " The friends walked on in silence, and 
then turned to other things. All that evening he was 
very gentle and serious, speaking, as he seldom did, of 
divine things, — of death, of sin, of eternity, of salvation ; 
expressing his simple faith in God and in his Saviour. 

There is a passage at the close of the " Roundabout 
Paper," No. XXIII., De Finibus, in which a sense of the 
ebb of life is very marked : the whole paper is like a so- 
liloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch, with 
unusually mild eye, retiring for the night ; he is putting 
out his high-heeled shoes, and before disappearing gives 
a wistful look into the passage, as if bidding it and all 
else good-night. He will be in bed, his candle out, and 
in darkness, in five minutes, and his shoes found next 
morning at his door, the little potentate all the while in 
his final sleep. The whole paper is worth the most care- 
ful study ; it reveals not a little of his real nature, and 
unfolds very curiously the secret of his work, the vitality, 
and abiding power of his own creations ; how he " in- 
vented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps, odds ^ 
and ends of characters," and met the original the other 
day, without surprise, in a tavern parlor. The following 
is beautiful :, " Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain 
well-known person (I believed a statement regarding him 
which his friends imparted to me, and which turned out 
to be quite incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel 
was never quite made up. I said to his brother, ' Why 
is your brother's soul still dark against me ? It is I who 
ought to be angry and unforgiving, for I was in the 
wrong.^ " Odisse quern Iceseris was never batter contra- 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 321 

vened. But what we chiefly refer to now is the profound 
pensiveness of the following strain, as if written with a 
presentiment of what was not then very far off: " Another 
Finis written ; another milestone on this journey from 
birth to the next world. Sure it is a subject for solemn 
cogitation. Shall we continue this story-telling business, 
and be voluble to the end of our age ? '* " Will it not be 
presently time, O prattler, to hold your tongue ? " And 
thus he ends : — 

" Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages ; oh, the cares, the 
ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over 
and over again I But now and again a kind thought is re- 
called, and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chap- 
ters more, and then the last ; after which, behold Finis itself 
comes to an end, and the Infinite begins." 

He sent the proof of this paper to his " dear neighbors," 
in Onslow Square, to whom he owed so much almost 
daily pleasure, with his corrections, the whole of the last 
paragraph in manuscript, and above a first sketch of it also 
in MS., which is fuller and more impassioned. His fear 
of " enthusiastic writing " had led him, we think, to sacri- 
fice something of the sacred power of his first words, 
which we give with its interlineations : — 

" Another Finis, another slice of life which Tempus edax has 
devoured ! And I may have to write the word once or twice 
perhaps, and then an end of Ends. Flmte is over, and Infi - 
nit e b e ginning . Oh the troubles, the cares, the ennui, the 

disputes, 
oomplioation B, the repetitions, the old conversations over and 

over again, and here and there and oh the delightful passages, 
the dear, the brief, the forever remembered ! And tlicn A few 
chapters more, and then the last, and then behold Finis itself 
coming to an end and the Infinite beginning ! " 

14* u 



322 THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 

How like music this, — like one trying the same air in 
different ways ; as it were, searching out and sounding all 
its depths. " The dear, the brief, the forever remem- 
bered " ; these are like a bar out of Beethoven, deep and 
melancholy as the sea ! He had been suffering on Sun- 
day from an old and cruel enemy. He fixed with his 
friend and surgeon to come again on Tuesday ; but with 
that dread of anticipated pain, which is a common condi- 
tion of sensibility and genius, he put him off with a note 
from " yours unfaithfully, W. M. T." He went out on 
Wednesday for a little, and came home at ten. He went 
to his room, suffering much, but declining his man's offer 
to sit with him. He hated to make others suffer. He 
was heard moving, as if in pain, about twelve, on the 
eve of 

" That the happy morn, 
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King, 

Of wedded maid, and virgin-mother born, 
Our great redemption from above did bring." 

Then all was quiet, and then he must have died — in a 
moment. Next morning his man went in, and opening 
the windows found his master dead, his arms behind his 
head, as if he had tried to take one more breath. We 
think of him as of our Chalmers ; found dead in like 
manner ; the same childlike, unspoiled open face ; the 
same gentle mouth ; the same spaciousness and softness 
of nature ; the same look of power. What a thing to 
think of, — his lying there alone in the dark, in the midst 
of his own mighty London ; his mother and his daughters 
asleep, and, it may be, dreaming of his goodness. God 
help them, and us all ! What would become of us, stum- 
bling along this our path of life, if we could not, at our 
utmost need, stay ourselves on Him ? 



THACKERAY'S LITERARY CAREER. 323 

Long years of sorrow, labor, and pain had killed him 
before his time. It was found after death how little life 
he had to live. He looked always fresh with that abound- 
ing, silvery hair, and his young, almost infantine face, but 
he was worn to a shadow, and his hands wasted as if by 
eighty years. With him it is the end of Ends ; finite is 
over, and infinite begun. What we all felt and feel can 
never be so well expressed as in his own words of sorrow 
for the early death of Charles Buller : — 

" Who knows the inscrutable design ? 

Blest be He who took and gave ! 
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine. 

Be weeping at her darling's grave? 
We bow to Heaven that willed it so. 

That darkly rules the fate of all, 
That sends the respite or the blow. 

That 's free to give, or to recall." 




MORE OF "OUR DOGS." 




MORE OF ''OUR DOGS. 




Peter. 
ETER died young, — very quick and soon that 
bright thing came to confusion. He died of 
excess of life ; his vivacity slew him. Plucky 
and silent under punishment, or any pain from 
without, pain from within, in his own precious, brisk, 
enjoying body, was an insufferable offence, affront, and 
mystery, — an astonishment not to be borne, — he dis- 
dained to live under such conditions. 

One day he came in howling with pain. There was 
no injury, no visible cause, but he was wildly ill, and in 
his eyes the end of all things had come. He put so 
many questions to us at each pang — what is this ? — 
what the can it be ? — did you ever ? As each par- 
oxysm doubled him up, he gave a sharp cry, more of 
rage and utter exasperation than of suffering ; he got up 
to run away from it — why should he die ? Why should 
he be shut up in darkness and obstruction at that hour of 
his opening morn, — his sweet hour of prime ? And so 
raging, and utterly put out, the honest, dear little fellow 
went off in an ecstasy of fury at death, at its absurdity in 
his case. 

We never could explain his death ; it was not poison 
or injury ; he actually expired when careering round the 
green at full speed, as if to outrun his enemy, or shake 



328 MORE OF "OUR DOGS." 

him off. We have not yet got over his loss, and all the 
possibilities that lie buried in his grave, in the Park, be- 
neath a young chestnut-tree where the ruddy-cheeked, 
fat, and cordial coachman, who of old, in the grand old 
Reform days, used to drive his master, Mr. Speaker 
Abercromby, down to "the House" with much stateli- 
ness and bouquet, and I dug it for him, — that park in 
which Peter had often disported himself, fluttering the 
cocks and hens, and putting to flight the squadron of 
Gleneagle's wedders. 

Dick. 

He too is dead, — he who, never having been born, we 
had hoped never would die ; not that he did — like Rab 

— " exactly " die ; he was slain. He was fourteen, and 
getting deaf and blind, and a big bully of a retriever fell 
on him one Sunday morning when the bells were ringing. 
Dick, who always fought at any odds, gave battle ; a 
Sabbatarian cab turned the corner, the big dog fled, and 
Dick was run over, — there in his own street, as all his 
many friends were going to church. His back was bro- 
ken, and he died on Monday night with us all about him ; 
dear for his own sake, dearer for another's, whose name 

— Sine Qua Non — is now more than ever true, now 
that she is gone. 

I was greatly pleased when Dr. Getting of Roxbury 
came in yesterday and introduced himself to me by ask- 
ing, "Where is Dick?" To think of our Dick being 
known in Massachusetts ! 

Bob. 
If Peter was the incarnation of vivacity. Bob was that 
of energy. He should have been called Thalaba the 



MORE OF '' OUR DOGS." 329 

Destroyer. He rejoiced in demolition, — not from ill 
temper, but from the sheer delight of energizing. 

When I first knew him he was at Blinkbonny toll. 
The tollman and his wife were old and the house lonely, 
and Bob was too terrific for any burglar. He was as tall 
and heavy as a foxhound, but in every other respect a 
pure old-fashioned, wiry, short-haired Scotch terrier, — 
red as Rob Roy's beard, — having indeed other qualities 
of Rob's than his hair, — choleric, unscrupulous, affection- 
ate, stanch, — not in the least magnanimous, — as ready 
to worry a little dog as a big one. Fighting was his 
"chief end," and he omitted no opportunity of accom- 
plishing his end. Rab liked fighting for its own sake, 
too, but scorned to fight anything under his own weight ; 
indeed, was long-suffering to public meanness with quar- 
relsome lesser dogs. Bob had no such weakness. 

After much difficulty and change of masters, I bought 
him, I am ashamed to say, for five pounds, and brought 
him home. He had been chained for months, was in high 
health and spirits, and the surplus power and activity of 
this great creature, as he dragged me and my son along 
the road, giving battle to every dog he met, was some- 
thing appalling. 

I very soon found I could not keep him. He worried 
the pet dogs all around, and got me into much trouble. 
So I gave him as night-watchman to a goldsmith in Prin- 
cess Street. This work he did famously. I once, in pass- 
ing at midnight, stopped at the shop and peered in at the 
little slip of glass, and by the gas-light I saw where he 
lay. I made a noise, and out came he with a roar and a 
bang as of a sledge-hammer. I then called his name, 
and in an instant all was still except a quick tapping 
within that intimated the wagging of the tail. He is still 



330 MORE OF "OUR DOGS.'' 

there, ^ — -has settled down into a reputable, pacific citizen, 
— a good deal owing, perhaps, to the disappearance in 
battle of sundry of his best teeth. As he lies in the sun 
before the shop door he looks somehow like the old 
Fighting T^m^raire. 

I never saw a dog of the same breed ; he is a sort of 
rough cob of a dog, — a huge quantity of terrier in one 
skin ; for he has all the fun and briskness and failings 
and ways of a small dog, begging and hopping as only it 
does. Once his master took him to North Berwick. His 
first day he spent in careering about the sands and rocks 
and in the sea, for he is a noble swimmer. His next he 
devoted to worrying all the dogs of the town, beginning, 
for convenience, with the biggest. 

This aroused the citizens, and their fury was brought 
to a focus on the third day by its being reported alterna- 
tively that he had torn a child's ear off, or torn and ac- 
tually eaten it. Up rose the town as one man, and the 
women each as two, and, headed by Matthew Cathie, the 
one-eyed and excellent shoemaker, with a tall, raw di- 
vinity student, knock-kneed and six feet two, who was his 
lodger, and was of course called young Dominie Samp- 
son. They bore down upon Bob and his master, who 
were walking calmly on the shore. 

Bob was for making a stand, after the manner of 
Coriolanus, and banishing by instant assault the " com- 
mon cry of curs " ; but his master saw sundry guns and 
pistols, not to speak of an old harpoon, and took to his 
heels, as the only way of getting Bob to take to his. 
Aurifex, with much nous^ made for the police station, 
and, with the assistance of the constables and half a 
crown, got Thalaba locked up for the night, safe and 
sulky. 



MORE OF "OUR DOGS." 331 

Next morning, Sunday, when Cathie and his huge 
student lay uneasily asleep, dreaming of vengeance, and 
the early dawn was beautiful upon the Bass, with its 
snowy cloud of sea-birds " brooding on the charmed 
wave," Bob was hurried up to the station, locked into a 
horse-box, — him never shall that ancient Burgh forget 
or see. 

I have a notion that dogs have humor, and are per- 
ceptive of a joke. In the North, a shepherd, having 
sold his sheep at a market, was asked by the buyer to 
lend him his dog to take them home. " By a' manner o' 
means tak Birkie, and when ye 'r dune wi' him just play 
so" (making a movement with his arm), " and he '11 be 
hame in a jiffy." Birkie was so clever and useful and 
gay that the borrower coveted him ; and on getting to his 
farm shut him up, intending to keep him. Birkie escaped 
during the night, and took the entire hirsel (flock) back 
to his own master ! Fancy him trotting across the moor 
with them, they as willing as he. 




PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 




PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 




Edinburgh, December 8, 1862. 
IK, — I am rejoiced to find Mr. William 
Chambers has taken up this matter. There 
is no fear of failure if Glenormiston sets him- 
self to organize a home for our destitute four- 
footed fellow-creatures, from whom we get so much of 
the best enjoyment, affection, and help. It need not be 
an expensive institution, — if the value of the overplus 
of good eating that, from our silly over-indulgence, makes 
our town dogs short-lived, lazy, mangy, and on a rare and 
enlivening occasion mad^ were represented by money, all 
the homeless, starving dogs of the city would be warmed 
and fed, and their dumb miseries turned into food and 
gladness. When we see our Peppers, and Dicks, and 
Muffs, and Nellys, and Dandies, and who knows how 
many other cordial little rufiians with the shortest and 
spiciest of names, on the rug, warm and cosey, — pursu- 
ing in their dreams that imaginary cat, — let us think of 
their wretched brethren or sisters without food, without 
shelter, without a master or a bone. It only needs a 
beginning, this new ragged school and home, where the 
religious element happily is absent, and Dr. Guthrie may 
go halves with me in paying for the keep of a rescued cur. 



336 PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 

There is no town where there are so many thoroughbred 
house-dogs. I could produce from my own dog acquaint- 
ance no end of first-class Dandy Dinmonts and Skyes ; 
and there is no town where there is more family enjoy- 
ment from dogs, — from Paterfamilias down to the baby 
whose fingers are poked with impunity into eyes as fierce 
and fell as Dirk Hatteraick's or Meg Merrelies's. 

Many years ago, I got a proof of the unseen, and, 
therefore, unhelped miseries of the homeless dog. I was 
walking down Duke Street, when I felt myself gently 
nipped in the leg, — I turned, and there was a ragged lit- 
tle terrier crouching and abasing himself utterly, as if 
asking pardon for what he had done. He then stood up 
on end and begged as only these coaxing little ruffians 
can. Being in a hurry, I curtly praised his performance 
with " Good dog ! " clapped his dirty sides, and, turning 
round, made down the hill ; when presently the same 
nip, perhaps a little nippier, — the same scene, only more 
intense, the same begging and urgent motioning of his 
short, shaggy paws. '' There 's meaning in this," said I 
to myself, and looked at him keenly and differently. He 
seemed to twig at once, and, with a shrill cry, was off 
much faster than I could. He stopped every now and 
then to see that I followed, and, by way of putting off the 
time and urging me, got up on the aforesaid portion of 
his body, and, when I came up, was off again. This con- 
tinued till, after going through sundry streets and by- 
lanes, we came to a gate, under which my short-legged 
friend disappeared. Of course I could n't follow him. 
This astonished him greatly. He came out to me, and as 

much as said, " Why the don't you come in?" I tried 

to open it, but in vain. My friend vanished and was 
silent. I was leaving in despair and disgust, when I 



PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 337 

heard his muffled, ecstatic yelp far off round the end of 
the wall, and there he was, wild with excitement. I fol- 
lowed and came to a place where, with a somewhat burg- 
larious ingenuity, I got myself squeezed into a deserted 
coachyard, lying all rude and waste. My peremptory 
small friend went under a shed, and disappeared in a 
twinkling through the window of an old coach-body, 
which had long ago parted from its wheels and become 
sedentary. I remember the arms of the Fife family 
were on its panel ; and, I dare say, this chariot, with its 
C springs, had figured in 1822 at the King's visit, when 
all Scotland was somewhat Fifeish. I looked in, and 
there was a pointer bitch with a litter of five pups ; the 
mother, like a ghost, wild with maternity and hunger ; 
her raging, yelling brood tearing away at her dry dugs. 
I never saw a more affecting or more miserable scene 
than that family inside the coach. The poor bewildered 
mother, I found, had been lost by some sportsman re- 
turning South, and must have slunk away there into that 
deserted place, when her pangs (for she has her pangs as 
well as a duchess) came, and there, in that forlorn re- 
treat, had she been with them, rushing out to grab any 
chance garbage, running back fiercely to them, — this 
going on day after day, night after night. What the re- 
lief was when we got her well fed and cared for, — and 
her children filled and silent, all cuddling about her 
asleep, and she asleep too, — awaking up to assure her- 
self that this was all true, and that there they were, all 
the five, each as plump as a plum, — 

*' All too happy in the treasure, 
Of her own exceeding pleasure," — 

what this is in kind, and all the greater in amount as 
many outnumber one, may be the relief, the happiness, 
15 V 



338 PLEA FOR A DOG HOME. 

the charity experienced and exercised in a homely, well- 
regulated Dog Home, Nipper—- iov he was a waif — I 
took home that night, and gave him his name. He lived 
a merry life with me, showed much pluck and zeal in 
the killing of rats, and incontinently slew a cat which 
had — unnatural brute, unlike his friend — deserted her 
kittens, and was howling offensively inside his kennel. 
He died, aged sixteen, healthy, lean, and happy to the 
last. As for Perdita and her pups, they brought large 
prices, the late Andrew Buchanan, of Coltbridge, an ex- 
cellent authority and man — the honestest dog-dealer 1 
ever knew — having discovered that their blood and her 
culture were of the best. 




«B I B L I OMAN I A." 




"BIBLIOMANIA."* 





1 



|OTHING, we suspect, is less intelligible to 
the uninitiated than the sort of pleasure 
which the inveterate book-collector derives 
from his peculiar pursuit, or than the intense 
eagerness which he often displays in it. One of the 
fraternity — a man of vast knowledge, and of great 
power as a thinker and a writer, — after having fol- 
lowed the "business," as he calls it, from early youth 
to wellnigh fourscore, lately declared that it " had never 
palled upon him for a single moment." f Yet, to most 
persons, this amassing of literary treasures is simply a 
" mania " ; even Mr. Burton, who ought to know better, 
has thought proper, in his very pleasant and witty Book- 
Hunter, to affect the satirical and depreciatory strain ; 
and whether he intended it or not, the impression left on 
the minds of his readers is, that a collector is a poor lost 
creature who greatly needs to be taken care of by his 
friends ; an office, by the way, which these same friends 

* This paper is from the same exquisite pen as *' St. Paul's Thorn 
in the Flesh," printed in the first series of " Spare Hours." Both 
essays were written by my cousin and friend, John Taylor Brown. — 
J. B. 

t Preface to Catalogue of Books, the Property of a PoHtical Econ- 
omist [J. R. M'Cullocli, Esq.], with Critical and Bibliographical 
Notices. London (privately printed), 1862. 



342 " BIBLIOMANIA/» 

(particularly if they happen to belong to the female 
order) are always very ready to perform. The great 
Lord Bacon, too, once threatened Sir Thomas Bodley 
(the founder of the Bodleian) whom he found slow to 
appreciate his new philosophy, with " a Cogitation against 
Libraries," to be added to the Cogitata et Visa. And we 
all remember Sir Walter's quiet quizzing of the book- 
collecting race in the mock heroics which he puts into 
the mouth of Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck : " Happy, thrice 
happy. Snuffy Davie ; and blessed were the times when 
thy industry could be so rewarded ! " 

But notwithstanding our having such high authorities 
against us, we are about to venture a word or two in de- 
fence of this much misunderstood and much calumniated 
class. And we shall attempt to show that even what are 
commonly regarded as the oddest and most fantastic pf 
their proceedings, often possess a foundation of intelligent 
interest which the very dullest must comprehend as soon 
as it is pointed out to them. To most persons, for in- 
stance, the fastidiousness of a genuine book-lover about 
the editions which he admits into his library ; his frequent 
preference of an old and dingy copy, to the finest modern 
reprint; and, above all, his anxiety to have two or three 
different editions of the same work in his possession, are 
quite unaccountable. A great part of what are called the 
reading public have no sense of the difference between a 
Baskerville and a Bungay edition, and the only idea 
they have as to the superior intrinsic value of one edition 
over another is, that it should be " the latest." Hence, in 
buying a copy of Jeremy Taylor's Sermons, for example, 
they would probably turn with contempt from the finest 
old folio of 1668 or 1678, and select, with unhesitating 
preference, the smug octavo edition of Mr. Thomas Tegg, 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 343 

in which we lately noticed one of the noblest passages of 
the great preacher disfigured and rendered unintelligible 
by having " spritefulness of the morning," converted (no 
doubt after grave consultation among the collective wisdom 
of the printing-office, and much turning over of Johnson) 
into " spitefulness." 

Charles Lamb declares that he could never read Beau- 
mont and Fletcher but in folio, and that he did not know 
a more heartless sight than the octavo reprints of the 
Anatomy of Melancholy, And, as generally happens with 
a saying of Lamb's, his remark, though given as mere 
matter of sentiment, has an excellent basis of common 
sense in it. What do our readers think of the fact that, 
since Milton's own time, there has not been a single edition 
of the Paradise Lost^ in which the text is given strictly as 
the author left it, and in which the language has not been 
tampered with in a way that would have given Milton 
himself (could he have become cognizant of it) the greatest 
annoyance and vexation ? The author of Paradise Lost, 
let it be remembered, besides being a man of the loftiest 
genius, was also one of the most accomplished scholars of 
his day. From his earliest youth he had " applied him- 
self to that resolution which Ariosto followed against the 
persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art he 
could unite to the adorning of his native tongue." ^ And 
although he disavows, as " a toylsome vanity," making 
" verbal curiosities his end," it is evident that not only in 
the formation of his vocabulary, but even in the most 
minute points of orthography, he was singularly careful and 
solicitous. The minute lists of errata at the end of some 
of the original editions of his prose tracts furnish curious 
illustrations of this. And in several copies of the Dor- 

* The Reason of Church Government, Book Second. 



344 "BIBLIOMANIA." 

trine and Discipline of Divorce (the edition of 1644), 
which lately came under our eye, we noticed that a number 
of mistakes in the printing had been carefully corrected 
with a pen. The corrections were the same in each copy, 
and the handwriting was also the same ; so that there 
could hardly be any doubt that they were made under 
the immediate superintendence of the author himself: a 
striking instance, as it seemed to us, of his close and anx- 
ious attention to typographical exactness. .We should be 
sorry to believe the reports of Milton's cruelty to his 
daughters, but we have a strong suspicion that he was a 
terrible torment to his printers.* 

It is well known to all who have examined the early 
editions of the Paradise Lost^ that Milton had made the 
attempt, altogether singular in his day, to introduce reg- 
ularity and system into English orthography. He was 
the first Englishman, so far as we know, who did so. 
Many of his words and modes of spelling, too, are pecu- 
liar to himself, and many of them also not only indicated 

* Perhaps, bowever, this may be a failing common to the whole of 
the *' irritable race." We have now before us a copy of the Sibylline 
Leaves^ which formerly belonged to Mr. Evans, its printer. It is en- 
titled *' Waste Office Copy," and has a marginal note, rather strongly 
indicative of a row in the printing-office. On the poem called " The 
Nightingale," at the line " And one, low piping, sounds more sweet 
than all," the insulted and indignant printer has written, " See the 
proof returned by Mr. Coleridge, for the justice of his charge of ' gra- 
tuitous emendation' on my part." " Gra-tu-i-tous e-men-da-tion " 
what a fine, big, many-jointed missile (a sort of verbal chain-shot) to 
discharge at the head of a printer. Mr. Coleridge had evidently been 
a practised hand at this sort of work, and we do not wonder that Mr. 
Evans held his breath, and had to content himself with confiding his 
wrongs in silence to his " Waste Office Copy." The line complained 
of will be found altered in the later editions. In addition to the above, 
the volume before us contains several various readings, none of them, 
however, of any great importance. 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 345 

scholar-like knowledge and precision of view on etymo- 
logical questions, but were adopted by him with a curious 
attention to musical effect, and with a felicitous recogni- 
tion of the close relation between sound and sense. Yet, 
strange as it may seem, every trace of this phase of 
Milton's mind has been obliterated from his works. In 
every modern edition all specialty in his language has 
disappeared. The orthography is carefully toned down to 
the tameness of present usage ; and, from no edition pub- 
lished since his own time, is it possible to discover what 
were Milton's ideas on the subject referred to, or even 
that he had any ideas upon it at all.* As an instance of 
the manner in which the language of the Paradise Lost 
has occasionally been emasculated by the liberties taken 
with it by later editors and printers, take the touching 
passage in the beginning of the third book, in which the 
author, alluding to his blindness, says : — 

" But thou 
Revisit' st not these eyes that rowle in vain 
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn." 

* We are afraid that no exception can be made in favor of the beau- 
tiful edition of the whole works of Milton, published by the late Mr. 
Pickering in 1851, 8 vols. 8vo, and since reprinted by an American 
house. The editor, indeed, professes to have followed the author's 
own editions, and he has no doubt taken considerable care to preserve 
the original orthography, but as he does not seem to have been fully 
acquainted with the principles of spelling which Milton had adopted, 
even a slight examination of the book has discovered to us repeated 
aberrations from his author's standard. We may add that our general 
experience of the late Mr. Pickering's editions has bred in us a great 
distrust of their accuracy, and on this ground also we must hesitate to 
guarantee his Milton. A beautiful duodecimo edition of the Paradise 
Lost was published by the Foulises of Glasgow, in 1750 (reprinted in a 
smaller size, 1761), which bore on the title-page to be " According to the 
Author's last edition in the year 1672 (1674?)." But, though probably 
the best edition of the text of Paradise Lost printed in last century, 
"we regret to say that neither can it be relied on for absolute accuracy. 
15* 



846 "BIBLIOMANIA." 

Now can any one inform us what possible reason there 
could be for diluting the full, rich, passionate resonance of 
rowle into the thin prosaic feebleness of roZZ, as has been 
done by Newton, Todd, and all the rest of the tuneless 
rout of Milton's editors ? 

As to the great majority of Milton's orthographical pe- 
culiarities, it may or may not be of any very great conse- 
quence that he chose to write 50t;ra7z instead of sovereign, 
perfet instead of perfect, thir instead of their, voutsaft for 
vouchsafed, ^M^5 instead of flutes, intrans% glimps, highly 
maistring, anow^ for enough, etc., etc. But it is, at any 
rate, worth knowing that he did so. Even the crotchets 
of such a mind are of interest to us, — a mind so widely 
informed with learning and subtile thought, — and pos- 
sess a value very different to that which belongs to those 
of the shallow and fantastic word-monger. The question, 
too, as to preserving the orthography of Milton's works, 
is one altogether distinct from that which is sometimes 
canvassed among mere antiquaries, of following the old 
spelling of other writers either of the same period or of an 
earlier time. For in their case no uniform rules of or- 
thography were observed, and they thought nothing of 
spelling the same word in half a dozen different ways in 
the same number of consecutive lines ; while he, on the 
contrary, practised a regular unvarying system deliber- 
ately formed by himself, and adopted upoii choice and 
aforethought. Besides, it is evident that, to some at 
least, if not to all of his peculiarities of language and or- 
thography, he himself, with all his indifference to " verbal 
curiosities," attached considerable importance. At the 
end of the first edition of Paradise Lost, for example, we 
meet with the following singular item among the errata : 
"Lib. ii. V. 414. For we read wee'' Even a tolerably 



** BIBLIOMANIA." 347 

attentive student of the early editions of Milton might be 
at a loss what to make of this. It is certain that we is to 
be met with in the Paradise Lost quite as often, or rather 
much oftener, with a single than with a double e. It oc- 
curs as we in the very next line to that here referred to. 
What then could be Milton's object in desiring its cor- 
rection in V. 414, while he leaves it unaltered elsewhere? 
The explanation is simply this, that, although in ordinary 
cases he is accustomed to spell the pronouns we^ me^ he^ ye, 
with a single e, wherever special emphasis is intended to 
be put upon them he makes a point of writing wee^ mee, 
hee, yee. At the end of Book IX., for example, we find the 
following passage thus given in the early editions : — 

" Thus it shall befall 
Him who to worth in woman ever trusting 
Lets her will rule : restraint she will not brook, 
And left to herself, if evil thence ensue, 
Shee first his weak indulgence will accuse." 

Again, Book X., line 1 : — 

" Meanwhile the hainous and despightfull act 
Of Satan done in Paradise, and how 
Hee in the serpent had perverted Eve, 
Her husband, Shee^''^ etc. 

In the same Book, line 137 : — 

" This woman whom thou mad*st to be my help, 
And gav'st me as thy perfet gift, so good. 
So fit, so acceptable, so divine, 
That from her hand 1 could suspect no ill, 
And what she did whatever in itself. 
Her doing seemed to justifie the deed; 
Shee gave me of the tree, and I did eate. 
To whom the Sovran Presence thus replied : — 
Was shee thy God that her thou did'st obey 
Before his voice, or was shee made thy guide 
Superior," etc. 



348 ** BIBLIOMANIA." 

Now, all this may not be very important, but it is at 
least worth knowing as one of the characteristics of Mil- 
ton's mind, that he was thus curiously ingenious and so- 
licitous about orthographical minutias. Yet no one could 
discover the fact without having the original editions of 
his works before him. And it would almost appear that, 
whether an author was, like Shakespeare, utterly careless 
about the accurate printing of his works, or, like Milton, 
painfully and laboriously attentive to the correction of the 
press, in either case he was equally sure of having his 
text depraved and mutilated by his ignorant and presump- 
tuous commentators and editors. 

Take another great author of the seventeenth century, 
— Jeremy Taylor. There is no reason to think that the 
question of fixing English orthography had engaged his 
attention, and the later editions of his works, which mod- 
ernize his antique spelling, have therefore done him no 
wrong thereby. But any one who wishes to read the pure 
text of Taylor will find just as little reason to trust to the 
" latest edition " of any of his works, as we have shown he 
can do to the modern copies of Milton. If we wish to 
obtain any certainty as to what he really wrote, we must, 
quite as much as in Milton's case, have recourse to edi- 
tions published in the author's lifetime. His singular 
phraseology (as odd often as that of Thomas Carlyle in 
the present day), the unexpectedness of his turns of 
thought, and the not unfrequent obscurity of his language, 
are constantly apt to throw out the printers, and a fine 
muddle they occasionally make of him. In any ordinary 
copy of the Holy Dying^ for example, on turning to chap, 
i., sect. 3, § 2, 3, we meet with the following passage : — 

" And let us a while suppose what Dives would have done 
if he had been loosed fi:om the pains of hell, and permitted to 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 349 

live on earth one year. Would all the pleasures of the world 
have kept him one hour from the temple ? Would he not per- 
petually have been under the hands of priests, or at the feet 
of the Doctors, or by Moses' chair, or attending as near the 
altar as he could, or relieving poor Lazarus^^ etc. 

Now, it might surely have occurred to any one that, as 
Lazarus is represented in the Gospel narrative as having 
died before Dives, and as Taylor's supposition does not 
include his coming to life again along with the latter, 
there is something like absurdity in the idea of one of the 
engagements of his renewed life being that of " relieving 
poor Lazarus." But if we refer to the edition of 1652, 
w^e shall find that the absurdity in question does not be- 
long to Taylor, and we shall also have the satisfaction of 
lighting on one of those quaint felicities of thought which 
are so characteristic of this divine, and which in all prob- 
ability would never have occurred to any other writer but 
himself. The true reading is Lazars^ not Lazarus. And 
yet in every edition we have happened to look into, rang- 
ing from about 1670 downwards to the present time, the 
absurd and nonsensical reading Lazarus occurs. Thus it 
is given in an exquisitely printed edition published some 
years ago by Parker of Oxford ; thus also the late Mr. 
Pickering has given it in all his beautiful editions ; and 
even in the copy of Taylor's whole works, published by 
the Longmans a few years ago, with lofty pretensions of 
being founded on a careful collation of the early editions, 
the same stupid blunder is repeated. As a specimen of 
the careless way in which Taylor has been reproduced 
for modern readers, we may give the following results of 
a comparison of a few pages taken quite at random, be- 
tween the second edition of 1652, and Mr. Pickering's 
elegant reprint of 1840, which most of its possessors prob- 



350' "BIBLIOMANIA." 

ably regard as all but immaculate. In chap. i. sect. iii. 
§ 5, line 4, casuality is printed for causality ; sect. iv. § 3, 
third last line, infinities for infinites ; sect. v. § 1, a whole 
line left out ; § 2, line 6, nor for not ; ih,^ ten lines from 
the end, unable to eat for enabled to eat ; same place, mar- 
iners instead of many mariners* Chap. ii. sect. i. § 2, 
line 20, resolved for revolved ; § 3, Bonadventur for Bon- 
aventure ; sect. ii. § 1, signs and tangents for sines and 
tangents. Now some of these may be mere trifles, others 
of them, however, seriously affect the sense of the passages 
in which they occur, and the whole of them together are 
more than enough to destroy all confidence in the accu- 
racy of an edition in which they are to be found. 

Lord Bacon is a third great author whose fate it has 
been to suffer somewhat severely in the reprinting of his 
works. What are we to think of such an editor as Mr. 
Basil Montagu, and such a publisher as Mr. Pickering, 
setting forth a magnificent edition of his works, and in 
printing many of his letters, never taking the trouble to 
examine the only reliable copies of them, viz. those pub- 
lished in the Resuscitatio by his chaplain and literary ex- 
ecutor. Dr. Rawley, but indolently contenting themselves 
with the inaccurate and worthless transcripts contained 
in the Cabala, in which not only many passages have 
been left out, but in which Bacon's memory has been in- 
sulted, by having attributed to his pen a rude and brutal 
letter to the illustrious Sir Edward Coke, upon the occa- 
sion of his falling into disgrace at Court, although it had 
been pointed out, years before Montagu's edition appeared, 
that the author of the Novum Organon had nothing what- 
ever to do with its composition ? Again, it is surely 
rather hard upon Bacon's fame, that though separate edi- 
tions of his Advancement of Learning have been reprinted, 



"BIBLIOMANIA." 351 

times without number, during the last two hundred years, 
it has only once occurred to any publisher that it would 
be desirable to incorporate the large additions which Lord 
Bacon made to the work shortly before his death. With 
this single exception, every edition published during that 
time contains nothing more than the two books published 
in 1605, and no one would discover from the common 
modern copies, that the work was afterwards extended to 
more than double its original size, and issued in the form 
of nine books in 1623.* It is true that Lord Bacon, in 
this final recast of the work, thought proper to adopt the 
Latin instead of the English tongue, but that need have 
been no obstacle in the way, as a fair enough translation 
by G. Wats had been published in 1640 (2d edition, 1674). 
Nothing was more easy than to have incorporated the 
additional matter with Bacon's own original English. 
But for what reason no one can tell, the Advancement of 
Learning in its perfect state has been as carefully kept 
out of the hands of the English public as if, instead of 
containing some of the finest philosophical thought to be 

* We are here, of course, speaking only of editions of the Advance- 
ment of Learning^ apart from the collected works of Bacon, and the 
particular edition referred to is one published by Bohn in 1853. It 
ought, however, to be stated that an English version of the Instauratio^ 
which had been introduced in the Philosophical Works of Bacon 
(3 vols. 4to) published by Dr. Shaw, was also, we believe, issued seo- 
arately in two small volumes in 1803, but the value of this edition is 
entirely destroyed by the absurd alterations which have been made in 
Bacon's arrangement, and by the entire exclusion of many important 
portions of the book. The admirable edition of Bacon's whole works, 
still in course of publication under the editorship of Mr. Spedding, 
contains a translation of the De Augmentis (no doubt incomparably 
superior to any other that has appeared), and it is greatly to be desired 
that this version should be printed in a volume by itself. That pub- 
lished by Bohn cannot be spoken of with any commendation. We 
greatly prefer to it the old translation by Gilbert Wats. 



352 " BIBLIOMANIA." 

found in all literature, it had been filled with matter as 
perilous to the health of souls as David Hume's long sup- 
pressed Essay on Suicide^ and Dialogues concerning Nat- 
ural Religion. 

So much, then, for the necessity of having recourse to 
editions published during an author's lifetime, if we wish 
to ascertain with absolute certainty what he really wrote. 

In addition to this there is often great interest in ascer- 
taining the gradual stages by which a great work has 
been brought to its ultimate form of perfection ; and a 
good deal is often to be learned on this point by com- 
paring the earlier with the later editions issued by the 
author. Hence the eagerness with which intelligent 
book collectors seek to assemble these in their libraries. 
The later editions, for example, of Jeremy Taylor's Life 
of Christ differ most extensively from the first, and show 
the most minute and careful correction both of the 
thouojht and lansruaore. The various editions of Hume's 
Essays also vary most materially from each other. 
Large retrenchments have often been made from the 
earlier copies, curious changes of opinion, particularly 
on political questions, are manifested,^ and the utmost 

* In the later editions of Mr. Hume's Essays, for example, there is 
a short disquisition on the question, " How it happens that Great 
Britain alone enjoys that liberty of the press which is not allowed in 
any other government, either republican or monarchical, — in Holland 
or Venice more than in France or Spain? " And the Essay concludes 
rather abruptly with the following sentence : " It must, however, be 
allowed that the unbounded liberty of the press, though it be difficult, 
perhaps impossible, to propose a suitable remedy for it, is one of the 
evils attending mixed forms of government." 

But if we turn to the edition of the little volume of " Essays, Moral 
and Political," published at Edinburgh in 1741, we find the author, 
instead of this harsh conclusion, going on in the following strain: 
" But I would fain go a step further, and assert, that such a liberty is 
attended with so few inconveniences, that it may be claimed as the 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 353 

diligence has been expended in the removal of careless 
or awkward expression, and in the modification of strong 

common right of mankind, and ought to be indulged them almost in 
every government ; except the ecclesiastical, to which indeed it would be 
fatal We need not dread from this liberty any such ill consequences 
as followed from the harangues of the popular demagogues of Athens 
and tribunes of Rome. A man reads a book or pamphlet alone and 
coolly; there is none present from whom he can catch the passion by 
contagion. He is not hurried away by the force and energy of action. 
And should he be wrought up to never so seditious a humor, there is 
no violent resolution presented to him, by which he can immediately 
vent his passion. The liberty of the press, therefore, however abused, 
can scarce ever excite popular tumults or rebellion. And as to those 
murmurs or secret discontents it may occasion, 't is better they should 
get vent in words, that they may come to the knowledge of the magis- 
trate before it be too late, in order to his providing a remedy against 
them. Mankind, 't is true, have always a greater propension to be- 
lieve what is said to the disadvantage of their governors than the con- 
trary; but this inclination is inseparable from them, whether they 
have liberty or not. A whisper may fly as quick, and be as pernicious, 
as a pamphlet. Nay, it will be more pernicious, where men are not 
accustomed to think freely, or distinguish betwixt truth and falsehood. 

" It has also been found, as the experience of mankind increases, 
that the people are no such dangerous monster as they have been 
represented, and that 't is in every respect better to guide them like 
rational creatures, than to lead or drive them like brute beasts. 
Before the United Provinces set the example, toleration was deemed 
incompatible with good government, and 't was thought impossible 
that a number of religious sects could live together in harmony and 
peace, and have all of them an equal afi'ection to their common coun- 
try and to each other. England has set a like example of civil liberty ; 
and though this liberty seems to occasion some small ferment at 
present, it has not as yet produced any pernicious effects, and it is to 
be hoped that men, being every day more accustomed to the free dis- 
cussion of public affairs, will improve in their judgment of them, and 
be with greater difficulty seduced by every idle rumor and popular 
clamor. 

" *T is a very comfortable reflection to the lovers of liberty, that 
this peculiar privilege of Britain is of a kind that cannot easily be 
wrested from us, and must last as long as our government remains in 
any degree free and independent. 'T is seldom that liberty of any 

w 



854 "BIBLIOMANIA." 

or exao-o-erated sentiment. In Dr. Johnson's Rambler 
the number of verbal changes made by the author, when 

kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men 
accustomed to freedom, that it must steal in upon them by degrees, 
and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes in order to be received. 
But if the liberty of the press ever be lost, it must be lost at once. 
The general laws against sedition and libelling are at present as strong 
as they possibly can be made. Nothing can impose a further restraint, 
but either the clapping an Imprimatur upon the press, or the giving 
very large discretionary powers to the court to punish whatever dis- 
pleases them. But these concessions would be such a barefaced 
violation of liberty, that they will probably be the last efforts of a 
despotic government. We may conclude that the liberty of Britain 
is gone forever when these attempts shall succeed." 

Such, then, were Hume's sentiments at and before the age of thirty. 
It would be difficult to find anything more just and felicitous on the 
subject, — rather a contrast to the utterance of his later days. The 
whole passage is a fine illustration of the fact that the generous fer- 
vor of youth is sometimes more akin to wisdom than the so-called 
experience of age. The characteristic irony of the clause we have 
marked in Italics must not be overlooked. 

Another curious, and perhaps less known, instance of deteriorated 
feeling and belief in an author may be quoted from the Chrisiiancn 
Eeligionis Institutio of John Calvin. This book, as is well known, 
was composed before Calvin quitted France, at the time when he 
lived the uneasy, insecure life of a persecuted fugitive at Angouleme ; 
and in the earlier editions of it we find the following paragraph on the 
manner in which it becomes Christians to act towards sinners and 
heretics : — 

" Familiarius versari aut interiorem consuetudinem habere non 
licet: debemus tamen contendere sive exhortatione, sive doctrina, 
sive dementia ac mansuetudine, sive nostris ad Deum precibus, ut 
ad meliorem frugem conversi in societatem ac unitatem ecclesise se 
recipiant. Neque ii modo sic tractandi sunt sed Turcae quoque, ac 
Sarraceni, cseterique religionis hostes." 

Beautiful words ! But consistency, we suppose, is also in its way 
beautiful. So at least Calvin seems to have thought. It was unfit- 
ting that the man who burned Servetus should continue to talk in 
such a strain. And so, we are told, in all the editions of the Institutio 
published after the horrid atrocious act of 27th October, 1553, the 
above and every other passage of a similar tendency were carefully 
expunged. 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 355 

he collected the separate papers into volumes, is said to 
have been not less than six thousand. Bacon's Essays,* 
Thomson's Seasons, Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, 
Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Clarendon's His- 
tory of the Eebellion, and Burnet's Own Times (the 
curious suppressions in the earlier editions of the two 
last of which were brought to light a good many years 
ago by Dr. Bandinel and Dr. Routh), are works which 
will probably occur to every one as exhibiting the most 
remarkable variations between the earlier and later 
editions. It is difficult to conceive any exercise of 
greater practical utility to the student who aims at mak- 
ing himself a master of correct thought or of English 
style, than the minute study of the process, as exhibited 
in these variations, by which great authors have brought 
their works to their most finished and perfect state. 

Another source of interest in books is that which fre- 
quently arises from their association with those in whose 
possession they have previously been. Some of our 
readers may perhaps recollect a fine passage in one of 
the late John Foster's Essays,t in which a train of re- 
flection, founded upon associations of this kind, is pur- 
sued with that sort of gloomy intensity and earnestness 
which characterized this great master of meditative 
thought. The kind of interest, however, to which we 
are now referring, is generally founded upon indications 
of former possession considerably more special and overt 
than those which Foster had in his eye, — indications 
which not merely impart a fanciful interest, but often 

* See the valuable little edition, edited by Mr. W. Aldis Wright 
(Macmillan, 1863), in which the variations of all the early copies are 
exhibited with great care and minute accuracy. 

t Prefixed to an edition of Doddridge's Rise and Progress. 



356 " BIBLIOMANIA." 

add a palpable value to the volumes which contain them. 
Let us give a few examples of what we mean from a 
small pile of relics now lying before us. 

The first is a copy of The Battaile of Agincourt^ and 
some other Poems, By Michael Drayton^ Esq, London. 
1627. Small folio. On the top of the fifth page we meet 
with the autograph " W"- Wordsworth, Rydal Mount " ; 
at page 117, where the poem "Nimphidia, the Court of 
Fayrie," begins, another poet, " Leigh Hunt," has writ- 
ten his name. And on one of the fly-leaves is a memo- 
rial of what must surely have been some pleasant social 
gathering. First, " Leigh Hunt " has inscribed his clear 
business-like autograph, and then follows, not imme- 
diately below his brother-poet, but apart by himself, as 
if he disdained to concede precedence, " W"** Words- 
worth," who is succeeded by '* R. H. Home," " T. N. 
Talfourd," and " Southwood Smith." The volume has 
been carefully read, as the frequent pencil-marks on the 
margin indicate, and, oddly enough, the mode of notation 
adopted is precisely that described in The Doctor as 
having been practised by Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster. 
" My friend," says Southey, " has noted in it, as was his 
custom, every passage that seemed worthy of observation, 
with the initial of his own name [D]. Such of his books 
as I have been able to collect are full of these marks. 
These notations have been of much use to me in my 
perusal," etc. Whether this was really " the Doctor's " 
copy or not we don't know, but here at least is the " D " 
occurring over and over again. 

Our second example is of somewhat higher interest. 
It is a copy of the first edition (in 4to) of " Joan of Arc, 
an Epic Poem, By Robert Southey. Bristol, 1796." 
It had formerly belonged to S. T. Coleridge, and is, in 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 357 

fact, the identical copy mentioned in a note to the last 
edition of the Biographia Literaria^ vol. ii. p. 31. No 
notice, however, is there taken of the most material and 
curious part of its contents. It is, in fact, one of those 
volumes of which Lamb speaks, " enriched with S. T. C.'s 
annotations, tripling their value." Coleridge, like most 
men of genius, had caught the trick of speaking out ex- 
actly what he thought, without much regard to conven- 
tional proprieties, and he has here set down some rather 
hard truths about Southey's early poem, with a degree of 
plain-speaking which had evidently greatly shocked his 
own family, who have made an amiable attempt (though 
happily not a perfectly successful one) to obliterate his 
just, though unsparing criticisms on their uncle Southey. 
We shall give some extracts. 

In the preface to the poem, Southey, speaking of Sta- 
tins and Lucan, mentions that " the French court honored 
the poet of liberty by excluding him from the edition in 
usum Delphini " ; adding, " I do not scruple to prefer 
Statins to Virgil ; his images are strongly conceived and 
clearly painted, and the force of his language, while it 
makes the reader feel, proves that the author felt him- 
self." Against this Coleridge has written : " The proper 
petulance of levelism in a youth of two-and-twenty. I 
will venture to assert Southey had never read, or more 
than merely looked through, Statius, or Virgil either, ex- 
cept in school lessons." 

Again, " The lawless magic of Ariosto," says Southey, 
" and the singular theme as well as the singular excel- 
lence of Milton, render all rules of epic poetry inappli- 
cable to these authors." On this Coleridge remarks : 
" N. B. — It is an original discovery of Southey's that 
the excellence of an epic poem should render the rules 



358 " BIBLIOMANIA." 

of epic poetry inapplicable to it. The Yorkshire pudding 
[has] been made with consummate culinary art ; the art 
culinary is therefore inapplicable to the making thereof. 
There is just the same difference between a poet, the 
most thinking of human beings, and a mock poet, as 
between cooks in egg skill." 

" So likewise," continues Southey, " with Spenser, the 
favorite of my childhood, from whose frequent perusal I 
have always found increased delight." " The marvellous 
egotism," subjoins Coleridge, " in the curt ipse dixit of 
this Epician ! " 

Coming to the poem itself, Coleridge sets down the 
following list of abbreviations, which he proposes to use 
in his marginal notes : — 

N.B. — S. E. means Southey's English, i. e. no English at all. 
N. means nonsense. 
J. means discordant jingle of sound, — one word rhyming or 

half-rhyming to another, proving either utter want of ear, 

or else very long ones. 
L. M. ludicrous metaphor. 
I. M. incongruous metaphor. 
S. = pseudo-poetic slang, generally, too, not English. 

Following this notation, Coleridge proceeds with his 
criticism on Book First. We print Southey's lines in 
the first column, and Coleridge's marginal notes in the 
second. The words in italics have been underlined by 
Coleridge : — 

Line 5. Or slept in death, or lingered S. E. out 

life in chains. 
L. 6. I sing : nor wilt thou, Freedom, I really can't promise that 

scorn the song. tho', quoth Freedom. 

L. 7. Sunk was the Sun: o'er all the ex- N. 

pause of air 
The mists of Evening deepening as they 

rose 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 359 

ChiUed the still scene; when thro' the J.* 

forest gloom 
Rapt on with lightning speed, in vain S. E. 

Dunois 
New checked with weaker force the un- S. E. 

heeded rein, Mercy on us, if I go on thus 

I shall make the book what 
I suppose it never was be- 
fore, rec?t all thro\ 

N. B. — Puns are for the 
ear. Punning by spelling are 
(sic) natural enemies. 

* Any jingle of this kind seems always to have struck offensively 
on Coleridge's quick ear. In a copy of Whistlecraft's (Hookham 
Frere's) "Prospectus and specimen of an intended national work," 
which formerly belonged to Mr. Gillman, we find a curious note, in 
Coleridge's handwriting, on the tenth stanza of the second canto. 

** He found a valley closed on every side, 

Kesembling that which Rasselas describes ; 

Six miles in length, and half as many wide, 
Where the descendants of the giant tribes 

Lived in their ancient fortress undescried : 
(Invaders tread upon each other's kibes)," etc. 

Over against this Coleridge has written, " I have ever found an un- 
pleasant effect where the consonances a, c, and e are assonant to 
the consonances b. d, and f." And the remark having probably long 
afterwards caught his eye, he then wrote below it in pencil, " What 
can I have meant by this? " The reader will perhaps be inclined at 
first to sympathize with his perplexity. Nevertheless, his words are 
both perfectly intelligible and perfectly well founded, The letters a, 
B, c, D, E, F are evidently intended to indicate the lines in their order 
as they stand in the verse, a, c, e and b, d, f severally rhyme to- 
gether, and are therefore called by Coleridge " consonances." But 
they are also said to be " assonant " to each other, because the vowels 
in both series of rhymes are the same, as s^de, describes, wide, tribes, 
etc. And any one who attends to the effect of the final words upon 
the ear, in reading the stanza, will at once be sensible of some con- 
fusion in the harmony, and will understand the nature of the " un- 
pleasant effect" of which Coleridge complains. 
t Coleridge writes his remarks with a red pencil. 



360 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 



L. 22. The new-born Sun Why refnlgent? A pol- 

Refulgmt smiles around. ished mirror, if put in the 

sun, is refulgent. The sun 
is fulgent, if there be such a 
word. 
L. 24. In dubious life Dunois unseals his L. M. 
eyes. 
And views a form with mildly S. 
melting gaze. 
L. 27. And on her rubied cheek S. 

Hung Pity^s crystal gem. 
L. 30. Silent he gazed, Gaze versus gaze. 

And gazing wondered. 

Then follows a passage from line 34, "When soft as 
breeze," etc., to line 51, including also line 59, against 
which Coleridge has pencilled his own initials, indicating 
that its authorship belonged to him. It, however, did not 
reappear among the fragments contributed to the " Joan 
of Arc," which he afterwards printed in the collected 
edition of his poems, under the title of 27ie Destiny of 
Nations. On this passage, at line 37, " His eye not 
slept," is corrected into " slept not " ; line 39, " Volleys 
red thunder," is pronounced to be S. (pseudo-poetic 
slang) ; and line 46, " Firm thy young heart," is de- 
clared to be "not English." 

they 



Line 84. As down the steep descent with 
many a step 
They urge their way. 
L. 89. Softened her eye, and all the 
woman reigned. 

L. 92. and the rising smoke 

Slow o'er the copse * that floated 
on the breeze. 



No doubt — unless 
rolled down. 



* A striking instance of 
the utter unfitness for the 
English language, which has 
no cases, of this dislocation 
of words. Who would not 
suppose it was the copse 
that floated ; but that it 
would be nonsense? 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 



361 



L. 94. She dried the tear, 

L. 95. Where rolls the Seine 

Full to the sea his congregated waves. 



L. 118. The mother's anguished shriek. 



S. E., to dry a cloth, to 
dry up the moisture on it. 

An important epithet, 
proving that the Seine roll- 
ing seaward showed no par- 
tiality to any particular 
wave. 

Not English. A participle 
presupposes a verb. Now 
there is no such verb as " to 
anguish," ergOj there can be 
no such participle as " an- 
guished." To guard with 
jealous care the purity of his 
native tongue, the sublime 
Dante declares to be the first 
duty of a poet. It is this 
conviction more than any 
other which actuates my se- 
verity towards Southey, W. 
Scott, etc., — all miserable 
offenders. 

S. 
Wished for. 



L. 124. For scarce four summers o'er my 

head had beamed their radiance. 

L. 127. Too fondly wished, too fondly 

deemed secure. 
L. 129. Heedless of death that rode the 
iron storm, 
Firebrands, and darts, and stones, 
and javelins. 

L. 133. have not effaced the scene 

From bleeding memory. 
L. 148. behold thine orphan child, 

She goes to Jill her destiny. 

The following words, at line 221, 

" The groves of Paradise 
Gave their mild echoes to the choral song 
Of new-born beings," 

are marked with the initials S. T. C. So also are the 
passages from 1. 269, beginning " Dispeopled hamlets," to 
16 



S. E., N., L. M. 

Verse ! 
I. M. 
S.E. 



362 " BIBLIOMANIA." 

1. 280 ; and from 1. 455, " From a dark lowering cloud," 
to 1. 460. And against 1. 485 to 496, on p. 33, begin- 
ning, " Down in the dingle's depth," Coleridge has writ- 
ten, " Suggested and in part worded by S. T. C." 

The greater part of Book Second was written by Cole- 
ridge himself, and is marked on the margin as his compo- 
sition. A long note on 1. 34 has not been reprinted in 
The Destiny of Nations. At the long passage beginning, 
" Maid beloved of Heaven," he has written : " These are 
very fine lines, tho' I say it that should not : but hang me 
if I know or ever did know the meaning of them, tho' my 
own composition." 

At the passage beginning 1. 398, 

" Guiding its course Oppression sat within, 
With terror pale and rage, yet laughed at times, 
Musing on Vengeance," etc., 

he has written : " These images imageless, — these small 
capitals constituting personifications I despised even at that 
time ; but was forced to introduce them to preserve the 
connection with the machinery of the poem previously 
adopted by Southey. S. T. C." The passage, we may 
mention, is left out in The Destiny of Nations. 
At line 420, 

** Shrieked Ambition's ghastly throng, 
And with them those, the Locust Fiends that crawled 
And glittered in Corruption's slimy track,'* 

he writes : " If locusts, how could they shriek ! I must 
have caught the contagion of unthinkingnessP The lines 
are accordingly altered in The Destiny of Nations. 

On the words a-nevhoLs vnoCevx^evj in the quotation, in 
the notes, from the Greek Prize Ode on the Slave Trade, 
he remarks : " o before C ought to have been made long, 



"BIBLIOMANIA." 363 

— dois vTToC is an Amphimacer, not (as the metre here 
requires) a dactyle. S. T. C." 

To the following lines in the concluding paragraph of 
his contribution, 

" Nature's vast ever acting Energy! 
In will, in deed, Impulse of All to all," 

he appends the following curious note: "Tho' these 
lines may bear a sane sense, yet they are easily, and more 
naturally interpretable into a very false and dangerous 
one. But I was at that time one of the mongrels — the 
Josephedites [Josephides = the son of Joseph, a proper 
name of distinction from those who believe m, as well as 
believe, Christ, the only begotten Son of the living God, 
before all time]." The lines were allowed to stand as 
originally written, in TTie Destiny of Nations^ the only 
change made being, that " Energy " and " Impulse " 
were not printed in capitals. In the line which imme- 
diately follows, " Whether thy Law^"^ was changed to 
« Lover 

In Book Third only two marginal remarks by Cole- 
ridge occur. On the following lines, at p. 107, 

" So have I seen the simple snowdrop rise 
Amid the russet leaves that hide the earth 
In early spring, so seen its gentle bend 
Of modest loveliness amid the waste 
Of desolation," 

Coleridge writes : " Borrowed from the Sacontala^ a 

Drama translated from the Sanscrit by Sir Wm. Jones." 

And a little further on, at p. 110, in the maiden's 

speech, beginning, 

" Father, 
In forest shade my infant years trained up, 
Knew not devotion's forms," etc., 



364 "BIBLIOMANIA." 

Coleridge remarks, "How grossly unnatural an anach- 
ronism thus to transmogrify the fanatic votary of the 
Virgin into a Tom Paine in petticoats, a novel-palming (?) 
proselyte of the Age of Reason." 

Looking at the severity of these criticisms, it is a little 
amusing to find Coleridge noting at the end of Book 
Fourth, " All the preceding I gave my best advice in cor- 
recting. From this time Southey and I parted. — S. T. C." 
Here, then, we suppose, he got weary of his work of an- 
notation. Enough, however, has been done by him to 
show the remarkable soundness of his critical judgment, 
and his singularly quick insight into whatever was false 
in thought or impure in English diction. The slight ap- 
pearance of petulance or ill-nature in some of the re- 
marks, no one who really comprehends Coleridge's char- 
acter will for a moment misunderstand. It was simply, 
we believe, the almost unconscious outcome of a perfectly 
natural person, not caring to put any restraint on the full 
and distinct utterance of the idea or impulse of the mo- 
ment, — a characteristic not by any means peculiar to 
Coleridge, — but common to him along with almost all 
men who think clearly, feel strongly, and are perfectly in 
earnest in the opinions or principles which they hold. A 
nature of this sort is almost always deficient in tact, and in 
stating what it regards as truth is ever apt to be betrayed 
into forgetfulness of how extraneous persons or things may 
be affected thereby. But all the while no law of kind- 
ness is violated, simply because all personal considerations 
are absolutely and entirely out of view. Coleridge's re- 
marks on Southey's early work form, we think, a very 
good supplement to the first chapter of the Biographia 
Literaria^ and are throughout illustrative of the principles 
of composition there laid down. We do not think there- 



«* BIBLIOMANIA." 365 

fore that we overrate their value when we venture to 
commend them to the attentive study of any one who 
wishes to acquire good habits of thinking, or a sound and 
correct English style. 

No. 3 is a copy of the Scriptores de Re Rustica. Paris^ 
ex orfflcina Roherti Stephanie 1543. In 2 vols, small 8vo. 
On the fly-leaf is the autograph " Wm. Wordsworth," and 
the volumes throughout are extensively marked and an- 
notated by his venerable hand. At first, one wonders a 
little what there could have been attractive to Words- 
worth in these old writers on agriculture. Books of any 
kind were not exactly his specialty. Practical, matter- 
of-fact books, probably least so. 

" A poet, one who loved the brooks 
Far better than the sages* books.'* 

And yet, from the traces which have been left by his 
pencil on these pages, there is reason to think that he 
had read every word of Cato, Varro, Columella, and Pal- 
ladius, and did not even omit the " Ennarrationes prisca- 
rum vocum per Georgium Alexandrinum," or the " Phi- 
lippi Beroaldi Annotationes in libros xiii. Columellae." 
On second thoughts, however, it is easy to see that the 
fresh glimpses of ancient out-of-door life, and of the simple 
scenes, " tasting of Flora and the country green," which 
these volumes bring before us, could not but have had a 
powerful interest for the author of " The Excursion." 
His notes, as might be expected, are totally different in 
character from those of his friend Coleridge on the " Joan 
of Arc." They show no critical acuteness, — scarcely any 
attempt at criticism at all, — no flashes of shrewd, biting, 
sarcastic wit. Taken individually and apart from the 
thought of who wrote them, they hardly, at first, give the 



366 "BIBLIOMANIA." 

impression of possessing interest or value of any kind. 
And it is only when, ceasing to expect anything marked 
or special in them, we are content to follow Wordsworth 
in his perusal of the book, " pausing where he had paused, 
observing what he had noted, and considering what to him 
seemed worthy of consideration," that we begin to see the 
kind of interest which they possess. We then find that 
we have got completely upon the track of Wordsworth's 
thoughts, as he read these singular old treatises, and npon 
the vein of feeling which they awakened within him. 
And in turning over the pages of this old book, we dis- 
cover everywhere the characteristic tendencies of his taste 
and genius with as much distinctness as we do in perus- 
ing his poetry. The points which he has chiefly noted 
are, — anything peculiar, uncommon, or specially felicitous 
in word or phrase, — anything beautiful, simple, tender, 
or poetical in thought or expression, — strange or fantastic 
beliefs, — curious out-of-the-way notions or observations 
of nature, — or anything else, in fact, that helps to indi- 
cate the ways, customs, or modes of thinking prevalent in 
the ancient world. When Cato, for example, uses the 
expression naves ambulant, Wordsworth notes the oddness 
of the phrase, and remarks that " hujus vocabuli " (his an- 
notations are chiefly written in Latin) " usum notavit Gel- 
lius^ When the same writer tells us that, in removing 
dung, it is of great importance that the work should be 
done silenti luna (when the moon is not shining), Words- 
worth not only underlines the exquisite words, but care- 
fully writes them out on the margin ; such a pearl was 
too precious to be left upon the dunghill. When you are 
informed that if your wine contains too much water you 
should put the liquid into a vessel made of ivy wood, and 
that then the wine will flow away while the water will 



'' BIBLIOMANIA." 367 

remain, nam non continet vinum vas ederacceum^ the sin- 
gular fact is noted with a cross. When you are told, in 
selecting your pigeons for slaughter, to drive those you 
wish to kill out of the dovecot into the seclusorium, and 
there put them to death secretly out of sight of the others, 
lest the latter, si videant, despondeant animum^ the whole 
passage is underlined, and the delicious recognition of the 
capacity of doves for grief and sad foreboding, in the 
words despondeant animum^ is written out on the margin. 
When Yarro gives the remarkable reason for the greater 
longevity of those who live in the country than of people 
bred in towns, quod divina natura dedit agros^ ars humana 
(Bdijicavit urbes, the singular felicity of the thought you 
may be sure does not escape him, and he quotes Cowper's 
version of the sentiment, " God made the country, but 
man made the town," at the foot of the page. When 
Columella tells us that if a mouse or a serpent falls into 
the wine-vat, we must, in order to prevent it from affecting 
the flavor of the wine, burn the dead body, pour the ashes 
when cool into the wine, and stir the liquid well with a 
rake or ladle, and that ea res erit remedio, Wordsworth 
gravely remarks, that it is " remedium Goione dignum " ; 
meaning, we suppose, that he expected something better 
from the more advanced intelligence of Columella, but 
that his remedium is no better than some of the absurdi- 
ties to be found in the earlier treatise of Cato. When 
Varro tells us of his going to visit Appius Claudius, the 
augur, at his country place, and finding him seated at 
table along with Cornelius Merula, a man of good consu- 
lar family, and Fircellius Pavo on his left hand ; and 
Munitius Pica and Marcus Petronius Passer on his right ; 
and how Axius Appius (who accompanied Varro) smiled 
{subridens)f and said, "Why, you receive us in your 



368 "BIBLIOMANIA.'* 

aviary where you sit among the birds," — Wordsworth, 
no doubt, thought how English-like the whole scene was, 

— the company the very same you might meet anywhere, 

— Mr. Merle, Mr. Peacock, Mr. Pye, and Mr. Sparrow ; 
and the thin jest, exactly the sort of thing that tells so 
well and goes so far in kindly English country-houses ; 
and so he fondly underlines all the points of the story. 
We might go on for pages noticing Wordsworth's curiously 
characteristic markings, but our rapidly decreasing space 
warns us to forbear. The condition of the volumes is 
also characteristic of Wordsworth, at least it confirms Mr. 
De Quincey's account of his utter indifference about the 
misusage of books which came into his hands. The bind- 
ing of both volumes is loose and broken, the body of the 
book separated from the back, many of the leaves torn 
out and lost, the whole of the pages pervaded by a deep 
yellow stain, and a large portion of the work so utterly 
rotten, that it can hardly be moved without scattering 
about mealy flakes, of what once was paper. Horace 
speaks of the infamy of him qui in patrios cineres minx- 
erit ; we wonder what is to be thought of a poet who 
performed the same office upon one of his favorite books. 

No. 4 is a copy of Gilbert Wakefield's edition of Vir- 
gil, containing the autograph " Byron," and the following 
strange note in the same handwriting, on the fly-leaves. 
It is evidently an unpublished scrap from the grim, bitter 
diary given in Moore's Life : — 

" Past midnight : invited to Lady Davy's ; sent word * could 
not come ' ; went after all for half an hour ; home again ; hate 
society ; man has been designated a * selfish * animal ; now, 
what in the name of comfort should bring any selfish man 
here ? Unless self prompt us to do nothing but what is agree- 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 369 

able to it, I do not see why it should have an ish tied to its tail. 
People going to a * swarie' are not selfish ; they sacrifice com- 
fort, and virtue, if they possess that article. At Lady D.*s 
squeeze, I was condemned to listen to an old dowager and 

Lord C , the old noodle. Swift says, ' Every man knows 

that he understands religion and politics, though he never 
learned them, but many people are conscious they do not un- 
derstand many other sciences, from having never learned them.' 
.... Took up Virgilius Maro. His is one of the books which 
give spring to the mind, — especially if you call the assistance 
of a tumbler of gin and water : there is genius in gin" 

No. 5 is a copy of Dr. Carlyle's translation of the Di- 
vine Comedy (out of sight, by the way, the best introduc- 
tion to the knowledge of Dante in the language. Why 
has it never been completed?) The former possessor 
has carefully destroyed all trace of his identity. But the 
volume contains a note which we think ought to excite 
some curiosity as to its authorship, because it suggests, 
we believe, a perfectly original, and, we are persuaded,, a 
perfectly correct explanation of a very obscure passage 
in the Inferno, on which no commentator hitherto has 
been able to throw any satisfactory light. 

In the third canto, Dante, speaking of those who lived 
without either blame or praise (senza infamia e senza 
lodo), says, " And I saw the shade of him who from cow- 
ardice made the great refusal " : 

** E vidi 1' ombra di colui 
Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto." 

The common interpretation is, that Celestine the Fifth, 
who abdicated the Papacy in 1294, is the person indicated. 
But we may safely conclude that Dante knew better than 
to consign a man to eternal pain for having declined the 
path of ambition. Our MS. aunotator has written on the 
16* X 



370 " BIBLIOMANIA.'* 

margin : " The reference is probably to Matt. xix. 22." 
And there cannot be the slightest doubt of it. A young 
man came asking our Lord, " What good thing shall I 
do, that I may have eternal life ? Jesus said unto him, 
If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and 
give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; 
and come, follow me. But when the young man heard 
that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great 
possessions." It is the only instance recorded in the 
Gospels in which Jesus " looking on a man and loving 
him," asked him to become his friend and companion, but 
the glorious invitation was declined. Certainly nothing 
that ever happened in this world could so justly be called 
" the great refusal." And it is touchingly characteristic 
of the deep purity and spirituality of Dante's mind that 
he so regarded it. 

No. 6 is the Biographia Liter aria of S. T. Coleridge, 
2 vols., 1847, with the autograph of " Sara Coleridge," on 
each of the volumes. It contains a considerable number 
of corrections for a new edition, and also several MS. 
notes by that admirable and accomplished woman ; one 
or two of them to us of much interest. If our readers turn 
to pp. 135, 136 of the second volume of the Biographia^ 
they will find a printed note, by Mrs. Coleridge, in refer- 
ence to Wordsworth's Blind Highland Boy^ in which she 
expresses — what many besides herself have felt — consid- 
erable regret that Wordsworth should have destroyed the 
simplicity of the original incident, by substituting the 
foreign shell for the " household tub " as the vessel in 
which the Highland boy sailed away. The chief objec- 
tion, she thinks, to the first form of the poem was, that 
Wordsworth had introduced the tub in a way so awk- 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 371 

ward as almost inevitably to suggest a feeling of the 

ridiculous, — 

" A household tub like one of those 
Which women use to wash their clothes." 

And in her MS. note, she suggests that this should be 
altered into 

" A tub of common form and size, 
Such as each rustic home suppHes." 

adding, " Mr. W. might recast the whole stanza, so as to 
avoid the sudden jerk downwards into the mean and 
trivial, still keeping the original incident. The nine new 
stanzas might be preserved in an appendix. This I ven- 
tured to suggest to the venerable author at Bath, March, 
1847. He did not reject the notion altogether. S. CJ' 
Another note also refers to a poem, of Mr. Wordsworth, 
*' The Gipsies." It occurs at p. 154 of the same volume. 
In a printed note here, Mrs. Coleridge says : " I hope it 
is not mere poetic partiality, regardless of morality, that 
makes so many readers neglect the sublime conciseness 
of the original conclusion : — 

" Oh better wrong and strife, 

Better vain deeds or evil than such life." 

And at the foot of the page she has written as follows : 
" Mr. Wordsworth promised me that this should be re- 
stored, at Bath, March, 1847. He said that he had made 
the alteration against his own judgment, in deference to 
an objection of Charles Lamb's. S. C." Both of these 
are interesting little bits of literary history. The other 
notes are principally mere verbal corrections of the text, 
and could scarcely be of much interest to the reader. 
They ought all, however, to be used in the event of a new 
edition of the book being called for. 



372 " BIBLIOMANIA." 

No. 7 is a copy of Southey's Doctor^ in 7 vols. 8vo, 
1834-1847. Such of our readers as are old enough to 
remember the original publication of this book will recol- 
lect the mystery which for some time hung over its au- 
thorship. It would seem, however, that the writer of a 
note at p. 17 of vol. i. of this copy had penetrated that 
mystery, and had found out a secret mark which deter- 
mined beyond the possibility of doubt that the writer of 
the book could be no other than Dr. Southey. In chap- 
ter iv. A. I., the author describes the effect of his an- 
nouncement that he intended to compose " the History 
of Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster, and his horse Nobs," 
upon the members of his own family, concluding his ac- 
count as follows : — 

" ' Why, he is not in earnest,' said my wife's youngest sister. 
* He never can be,' rephed my wife. And yet, beginning to 
think that peradventure I was, she looked at me with a quick 
turn of the eye. * A pretty subject indeed for you to employ 
your time upon ! You, — vema whehaha yoku almad otenba 
twandri athancod ! ' I have thought proper to translate this 
part of my commandante's speech into the Garamna tongue." 

Now, our MS. annotator points out that " Garamna" is 
simply the word Anagram anagrammatized ; and taking 
this as the key to the interpretation of the queer gibberish 
given above, his wife's speech is found, on a transposition 
of the letters, to read thus: "A pretty subject indeed 
for you to employ your time upon ! you — you who have 
written Thalaba, and Kehama, and Madoc ! " "* 

No. 8 is a copy of the poems of the Rev. John Logan, 

* This curious little discovery was communicated by the present 
writer to the Examiner newspaper more than twenty years ago. But 
as it will probably be new to most of the readers of these pages, it 
may be excusable to reprint it here. 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 373 

which formerly belonged to John Miller, Esq., of Lin- 
coln's Inn. Over against the " Ode to the Cuckoo," Mr. 
Miller has inserted a slip of paper containing the follow- 
ing curious piece of information : " The following note 
relative to the ' Ode to the Cuckoo ' was found among the 
papers of Dr. Grant, one of Logan's executors ; — 

** Alas, sweet bird ! not so my fate : 
Dark scowling skies I see, 
Fast gathering round and fraught with woe 
And wintry years to me." 

" I find that after the stanza * sweet bird ! ' he had written 
the above, but as he did not express a wish to have it in- 
serted, I have omitted it. And it is perhaps too solemn 
for the tone of the rest of the poem, but it is expressive 
of that predictive melancholy which was with him consti- 
tutional." 

Now, of course. Dr. Grant must have been much better 
qualified to judge than we are as to Logan's disposition to 
" predictive melancholy." But it is at least remarkable 
that the " Ode to the Cuckoo " should thus be ascertained 
to have included a stanza so strikingly characteristic of 
Michael Bruce, who is, on other grounds, strongly sus- 
pected to have been the real author of the poem. The 
singularly close parallelism of the above with the well- 
known lines, — 

" Now spring returns, but not to me returns 
The vernal joy my better years have known,*' etc., 

must necessarily strike every one. The stanza we have 
now given has never, so far as we know, been printed 
before, and it is a little unaccountable that it should not 
have reached the hands of Dr. Mackelvie, who published 
a carefully edited edition of Bruce's poems about thirty 
years ago, and who, as we remember, mentions that he 



374 '' BIBLIOMANIA." 

had applied to Mr. Miller of Lincoln's Inn, for any infor- 
mation that might be in his possession, bearing upon the 
question as to the authorship of the several poems which 
have been variously attributed both to Bruce and Logan."^ 

No. 9 is " Letters written by the late Right Honorable 
Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Esq. London, 
1775." It has the book-plate of " Mr. Horatio Walpole," 

* In this and the previous instance (of the Biographia Liter aria) we 
have examples of new and interesting information being sometimes ob- 
tainable from the MS. notanda of previous possessors of a volume. 
Another curious case of the same kind is given by Dr. John Brown in 
his letter to Dr. Cairns, published as a supplement to the life of his 
father. A copy of Richard Baxter's Life and Times j belonging to the 
late Rev. Dr. Brown, contained the autograph of Anne Countess of 
Argyll, the widow of Archibald Earl of Argyle, who died on the scaffold 
in 1685, together with a most affecting note by her, on that passage in 
Baxter (p. 220), where he brings a charge of want of veracity against 
her eldest daughter, who had unfortunately been perverted to Popery, 
and carried off to a convent in France by her spiritual advisers. The 
note, according to Dr. Brown, is written " in a hand tremulous with 
age and feeling." It is as follows: " I can say w* truth I neuer in all 
my lyff did hear her ly, and what she said, if it was not trew, it was b^ 
others suggested to hir, as yt she wold embak on Wedensday. She be- 
lieved she wold, bot thy took hir, alles ! from me who never did sie her 
mor. The minester of Cuper, Mr. John Magill, did sie hir at Paris in 
the convent. Said she was a knowing and vertuous person, and hed 
retined the living principels of our rehdgon, which made him say it 
was good to grund young persons weel in ther relidgion, as she was 
one it appired weel grunded." On the volume being shown to Lord 
Lindsay (whose ancestrix Lady Argyll was, by her previous marriage 
with the Earl of Balcarres), he wrote to say, that the information it 
contained was unknown to him at the time when he wrote the Lives 
of the Lindsays. "I had always been under the impression," here- 
marked, " that the daughter had died very shortly after her removal 
to France, but the contrary appears from Lady Argyll's memoran- 
dum. That memorandum throws also a pleasing light on the later 
life of Lady Anna, and forcibly illustrates the undying love and ten- 
derness of the aged mother, who must have been very old when she 
penned it, the book having been printed as late as 1696." 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 375 

and is full of notes in his handwriting, indicating the most 
curiously minute acquaintance with all the small gossip of 
high society, during the whole period over which the let- 
ters extend. We have scarcely room, nor would it be 
worth while, to give the whole of these odd annotations. 
One or two will be enough to give an idea of the sort of 
matter they contain. The handwriting, by the way, has 
a great resemblance to that of the late Mr. Charles Kirk- 
patrick Sharpe ; and in the following, which is written 
on the back of the title-page, you can almost fancy that 
you are listening to the shrieky treble of that confirmed 
old scandal-monger : — 

" Henrietta St. John, daughter of Henry Viscount St. John, 
by his second wife (a Frenchwoman) and half-sister of the fa- 
mous Lord Bolinbroke, was wife of Robert Knight (son of the 
cashier of the South Sea Company),- by whom she had a son, 
who died, without issue, before his father, and a daughter, 
Henrietta, mentioned in these letters. Robert Knight was 
created Lord Luxborough, and after his wife's death, Earl of 
Catherlogh. They had been parted many years, on her hav- 
ing an intrigue with Parson Dalton, the reviver of Comus, and 
tutor of Lord Beauchamp, only son of the Duchess of Somerset, 
mentioned in these letters." 

At p. 27 Lady Luxborough writes as follows : " The 
late King George [the First] was fond of peaches stewed 
in brandy in a particular manner, which he had tasted at 
my father's ; and ever after, till his death, my mamma 
furnished him with a sufficient quantity to last the year 
round {he eating two every night). This little present 
he took kindly ; but one season proved fatal to fruit-trees, 
and she could present his Majesty with but half the usual 
quantity, desiring him to use economy, for they would 
barely serve him the year at one each night. Being thus 



376 " BIBLIOMANIA." 

forced by necessity to retrench, he said he would then eat 
two every other night, and valued himself on having mor- 
tified himself less than if he had yielded to their regula- 
tion of one each night ; which, I suppose, may be called 
a compromise between economy and epicurism.'* To 
the words, " my mamma " in this paragraph, Horace 
Walpole appends the following information : " Angelica 
Magdalen, daughter of George Pillesary, Treas. Gen. of 
the Marine to Louis XIV. Besides Lady Luxborough, 
she had a son, Hollis St. John, a famous mimic and buf- 
foon. He once dressed himself in his mother's cloaths, in 
London, and went into a balcony over the street, pretend- 
ing to be drunk, and danced with a punch-bowl on his 
head, the mob taking him for Lady St. John." 

At p. 217, on an allusion to "Mr. Meredith," Walpole 
writes : " This Mr. Meredith, afterwards Sir William, 
was originally a Jacobite, then a great Whig, and patron 
of the Presbyterians ; and then grew a courtier, and was 
made Comptroller of the House by the Tory Ministry in 
1775." 

At p. 325, Lady Luxborough speaks of her spirits being 
depressed by her " daughter's imprudence (to call it by 
no worse a name)." Walpole explains that this refers 
to her daughter Henrietta ; adding, " She was divorced 
from Mr. Wymondesell for an intrigue with Josiah Child, 
brother of the Earl of Tilney, and married him after her 
divorce." 

At p. 334, Lady Luxborough says : " I find your 
beauty. Lady Diana Egerton, is married, but not to the 
lover that I saw her with the last season that I was at 
Bath " ; upon which Walpole notes that Lady Diana was 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 377 

" youngest daughter of Scrope, Duke of Bridgewater ; 
that she married Frederick Calvert, Lord Baltimore ; and 
that * the lover ' was Henrj Seymour," etc., etc. 

One other example of the curious value and interest 
often attachable to books, in consequence of their associ- 
ation with some previous possessor, we must give from 
the Memoires d'un Bihliophile^ par M. Tenant de Latour, 
Paris, 1861. One day M. de Latour picked up at a stall 
in Paris a copy of Thomas A'Kempis's De Imitatione 
Ohristi^ with the autograph of Jean Jacques Rousseau on 
the title-page. It contained only two marginal notes, 
neither of them of much interest. But it had evidently 
been read with extraordinary care, and more than half 
the book was underlined with a pencil. It bore marks 
too of having been the constant pocket-companion of the 
unhappy misanthrope. It had been read in the evenings, 
for there were drops of grease from the candle upon its 
pages, and it had accompanied him in his country walks, 
for there were dried flowers stuck here and there between 
the leaves. It became of interest to ascertain at what 
period of Rousseau's life he had thus given himself up to 
the study of the Imitatio ; and M. de Latour, after much 
unsuccessful inquiry, was at last able to get some light on 
the point. In a letter of Rousseau's to a Paris bookseller, 
written from Motiers de Travers, in January, 1763, the 
following sentence was found : " Voici des articles que je 
vous prie de joindre h. votre premier envoi : Pensees de 
Pascal, (Euvres de La Bruyere, Imitation de Jesus Christ, 
latin." The fact then was plain, that he had begun to 
make his acquaintance with A'Kempis shortly after he 
had finished his principal works, about the time he had 
received, through the kindness of Marshall Keith, a sort 



378 "BIBLIOMANIA." 

of temporary asylum in the Val de Travers in Neuchatel, 
and when those outcries and persecutions against him had 
^commenced, which by and by seem to have driven him 
into a state of mind little removed from insanity. 

It is surely most curious and interesting thus to find 
(and this little volume is the sole record of the fact) that 
at such a time poor Rousseau sought such pure and ele- 
vated consolation from his sorrows as that which is to be 
found in the pages of Pascal and of A'Kempis, and that 
the latter of these authors at least he had studied with 
the most devoted attention. It throws a new and tender 
light on the character of Jean Jacques, and revives a 
feeling of sympathy and kindness towards him, which his 
own follies and perversities had nearly destroyed in all 
our minds. All this was enough to give the greatest 
interest to the volume, but another curious mark of its 
old possessor was still to be discovered. In his " Confes- 
sions," Rousseau mentions the vivid delight which the 
finding of a flower of the periwinkle once gave him when 
ascending a hill near Crossier, in consequence of its re- 
calling to him some interesting circumstance in his con- 
nection with Mad. de Warrens thirty years before, not 
having seen the plant during all that intervening period. 
His sentimental transport on the occasion forms the sub- 
ject of a well-known passage in the " Confessions," and 
on turning over the leaves of the Imitatio^ M. de Latour 
found a dried specimen of the periwinkle among the other 
flowers which, as we have mentioned, the volume con- 
tained. Well, the finding of the little flower at Crossier 
is stated in the " Confessions " to have been in 1764, while 
the purchase of the Imitatio is proved to have been in 
1763, and as it had evidently been carried about in his 
pocket for a long time afterwards, there was no small 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 379 

probability that it was still his companion when at Cross- 
ier, and that this was the identical periwinkle which so 
powerfully affected him, and of which he makes so much. 

But there is a limit to this sort of thing, and we must 
now have done. We submit, however, that though we 
have thus touched on but a very small corner of the 
subject, we have sufficiently made out our case, — that 
book-collecting really has some solid basis of intelligent 
interest, that it may legitimately call forth some degree of 
fervor and enthusiasm, that it cannot altogether be re- 
garded as the pursuit of a mind verging on fanaticism or 
insanity, and that it must be classed in a totally different 
category from the taste for old china, old snuff-boxes, old 
oak chairs, or old swords and daggers. Without such 
knowledge as the true book-collector generally possesses, 
and such care and solicitude as he is accustomed to 
exercise, it is evident from what we have shown, that we 
shall be pretty certain to miss something that is best in 
the works of great authors of past times. And so also, 
the most curious information, the most solid instruction, 
and the most unexpected and interesting insight both 
into the character, habits, and tastes of men of genius, 
and into other matters not less important, will often be 
the reward of that quick scent and tact which the zealous 
book-collector seldom fails to acquire in the exercise of 
his pursuit. 

Before concluding, we may refer to one great difficulty 
in the way of the book-collector in Scotland, which seems 
to us too remarkable and characteristic of her people to 
be passed over. All our best old books have been read 
nearly out of existence. Printing was not introduced 
into Scotland till so recently as about 1507 or 1508, but 
the productions of the Scottish press are infinitely more 



380 " BIBLIOMANIA." 

rare than books printed at a much earlier period in Eng- 
land by Caxton or Wynkyn de Worde. One of the 
earliest books published in this country was a collection 
of the poems of some of the Scottish " Makars " of the 
time. But only one copy'^ has survived the tear and 
wear of ceaseless turning over of the leaves by entranced 
readers. During the later years of the same century, 
the numerous works of the reformer Knox and his coad- 
jutors, the dramas and satires of Sir David Lyndsay, the 
grand old national epics of " The Bruce " and " The 
Wallace,'* and others, must have been circulated by 
thousands through the country. But the bibliomaniac is 
fortunate above his fellows who can light on any chance 
trace of them. In the succeeding century it is little 
better. Calderwood, Robert Bailie, Cowper, the Bishop 
of Galloway, Hugh Binning, Rutherford, Guthrie of 
Fenwick, Durham, Dickson, Brown of Wamphray, the 
authors of " Naphtali " and the " Hind let Loose," with 
Leighton, Henry Scougal, and many others, all published 
more or less extensively. But the form in which their 
works now generally present themselves to us is that of 
stained, worn, dirty, decayed fragments, one half of the 
book having frequently disappeared, and often only a few 
disconnected leaves remaining. Even of the popular 
theological and other publications of the last century, 
nothing is more difficult than to obtain passably good 
copies. Thomas Boston's chief works, Willison of Dun- 
dee's, Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine's, Hallyburton's of 
St. Andrews, John Brown of Haddington's, and the 

* Even this is very imperfect. It is now in the Advocates' Library, 
which can boast of a noble collection of specimens of early Scottish 
typography, many of them beautifully executed, and in singularly fine 
preservation. 



" BIBLIOMANIA." 381 

thousand and one reprints of earlier authors which the 
Edinburgh and Glasgow presses poured forth, have been 
read and reread, thumbed, leant on, dog's-eared, and 
wept over, till the paper has been fretted almost to wool 
by black and horny hands, and till the original shape, 
binding, and color of the volumes have almost entirely 
dissappeared. Whatever may be the value of Scottish 
thought as expressed in its popular literature and theology, 
assuredly it cannot be said that the people of Scotland 
have not made the most of it. All this is in marked 
contrast to the state of things in England where works 
even of the seventeenth century, intended for popular 
instruction or entertainment, and thoroughly well adapted 
to their purpose, may easily be met with in perfect order, 
and with the leaves, to all appearance, never separated 
since they passed out of the hands of the old binder. 
Perhaps in nothing that we could adduce does the dissim- 
ilarity between the two nations more remarkably appear : 
the one having a peculiarly Ignorant, untrained, and un- 
progressive peasantry ; the other a singularly well-edu- 
cated, thoughtful, and religious one : the one with the mass 
of the people extremely indifferent to literature of any 
kind, and with a strong and ready spirit of empirical 
practicality characterizing almost all classes ; the other 
with a devotion to and belief in books rising sometimes 
very nearly to superstition. 




«IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN 
VISION." 



r. 



"IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

HAD a friend, — and, though ne is now else- 
where, why should n't I say I have him still ? 
He was a man of great powers and of greater 
gifts. He might have made himself almost 
anything a man may be ; but he died unfulfilled, " de- 
prived of the residue of his years " ; and this owing much, 
among other things, to an imperfect and damaged organ- 
ism and an intermittent will. He was an advocate and 
judge, and had in him the making of a great lawyer, — 
good sense, vast and exact memory, a logical, vigorous 
understanding, and readiness, fulness, and felicity of 
speech. He had in him, as Jonathan Edwards would 
have said, more than the average quantify of being ; and, 
now that he is gone, I feel what a large space he filled in 
my mind. His was a large, multilocular brain, with 
room for all sorts of customers. But it is to his " study 
of imagination " I now refer in what follows. 

He was a mighty dreamer, especially in the diluculum, 
or " edge o' dark," before full awakening ; and he used to 
relate to his cronies these Kubla Khan-like visions with 
amazing particularity. Many of us would have it that 
he made up his dreams, but I had the following proof of 
the opposite. 

Many years ago, when we were at college, I had gone 
17 T 



386 "IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

up to his lodgings to breakfast with him. I found him 
sound asleep, his eyes open and fixed as in a mesmeric 
trance ; he was plainly rapt in some internal vision. I 
stood by him for some seconds, during which his color 
and his breathing came and went as if under some deep 
feeling, first of interest and wonder, finally of horror, 
from which he awoke into full consciousness, scared and 
excited, asking me instantly to write. He then, in an 
anxious, eager voice, began thus : — 

" *T is noon, but desolate and dun 

The landscape lies, 

For 'twixt it and the mounting sun . 
A cloud came crawling up the skies ; 
From the sea it rose all slowly, 
Thin and gray and melancholy, 
And gathered darkness as it went 
Up into the firmament." 

Here he stopped, and, with a shrug of regret, said, " It 's 
gone ! " The blanks were two words I could not make 
out, and which he never could recall. It would be curi- 
ous if those who may read these lines were to try what 
adjectives of two syllables they liked best, and send them 
on to Mr. Macmillan : it would form an odd poetico-sta- 
tistical inquiry. 

He then gave the following fragments of his vision, 
which he said was complete, and in verse : — 

He found himself in the midst of a vast marshy plain, 
in utter solitude, nothing around him but the dull, stag- 
nant waters, overrun with dry reeds, through which by 
fits there stirred a miserable sought leaving the plain op- 
pressed with silence, and the dead, heavy air. On the 
small bit of ground where he stood was a hut, such as the 
hunters of water-fowl might frequent in the season ; it 
was in ruins, everything rude and waste, and through its 



"IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 387 

half-shut, broken door, he was aware of the presence and 
of the occasional movements of a man, at times as if 
fiercely struggling in the darkness with some one else. 
Opposite the door sat and brooded a large white dove, — 
its lustrous dark eyes fixed on the door, — all its feathers 
as if " stirred with prayer," and uttering a low croodlin 
sound as in an ecstasy of compassion and entreaty, lean- 
ing gently towards its object. 

Suddenly, and without noise, an ugly bird, long-legged, 
lean, mangy, and foul, came poking with measured steps 
round the end of the hut. It was like the adjutant crane 
of Eastern cities, and had an evil eye, small and cruel. 
It walked jauntily past the dove, who took no heed, and 
stood like a fisher on the edge of the dead and oozy water, 
his head to one side, and his long sharp beak ready to 
strike. He stood motionless for an instant ; then, with a 
jerk, brought up a large, plump, wriggling worm, shining, 
and of the color of jasper. 

He advanced to the dove, who was yearning more and 
more towards the door. She became agitated, and more 
earnest than ever, never lifting her eyes from their ob- 
ject, and quivering all over with intensity. The evil 
bird was now straight in front, and bent over her with 
the worm. She shut her eyes, shuddered all through ; 
he put his dirty black foot on her snowy back and pressed 
her down so that she opened her mouth wide, into which 
the worm was instantly dropped. She reeled over dead, 
towards the hut, as if the last act of life was to get 
nearer it. 

Up to this moment the struggle inside the hut had gone 
on, lulling and coming again in gusts, like the wind among 
the reeds, and the arms of more than one might be seen 
across the dark ragged doorway, as if in fell agony of 
strife. 



888 "IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

The instant the dove died, all sound and motion ceased 
within, and the whole region, as my friend said, " shook 
throughout." He was aware that within Judas, " the son 
of perdition," lay alone and dead. 

Such was this " clear dream," and these are many of 
the words my friend used. It has always seemed to me 
full of poetry in posse, amorphous and uncrystallized, 
but the germ there, to which the author of The Devil's 
Dream, Mr. Aird, might have given, or if he likes may 
yet give, " the accomplishment of verse." 

That lonely and dismal place and day, desolate and 
overshadowed as in eclipse at noon, — the wretch within 
and his demon, — the holy, unfailing dove, 

" White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure," 

m such a place, — the tall, stealthy fellow, with the small 
cruel eye, — the end, — what was going on elsewhere on 
that same day, — " the hour and the power of darkness," 
— the eternity and the omnipotence of light and love, — 
" the exceeding bitter cry," — " the loud voice," and " It 
is finished," — was there not here something for the high- 
est fantasy, some glimpse of " the throne and equipage 
of God's almightiness " ? 

The above dreamer was the well-known (on his own 
side of the Tweed) A. S. Logan, sheriff of Forfarshire. 
He was the successor, but in no wise the ape, in the true 
Yorick line, — " infinite jest, most excellent fancy," — of 
the still famous Peter Robertson, who served himself heir 
to that grotesque, sardonic wit, John Clerk of Eldin. 

Logan differed from each as one wine or one quaint 
orchid — those flower-jesters which seem always making 
faces and fun at us and all nature — from another. He 



"IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 389 

had not the merciless and too often unspeakable Swiftian 
humor of Lord Eldin, nor the sustained, wild burlesque 
and jocosity of Lord Robertson ; but he had more imagi- 
nation and thought, was more kindly affectioned than either, 
and his wit was more humorous, his humor more witty. 
Robertson was a wonderful being : it is not easy to ex- 
aggerate his comic powers. A natural son of Falstaff, 
he had his father's body as well as soul, such a mass of 
man, such an expanse of countenance, — probably the 
largest face known among men, — such eyes gleaming 
and rolling behind his spectacles, from out their huge 
rotundity, chubby-cheeked, and by way of innocent, like 
a Megalopis Garagantua unweaned, — no more need of 
stuffing for his father's part than had Stephen Kemble ; 
while within was no end of the same rich, glorious, over- 
topping humor ; not so much an occasional spate of it, 
much less a tap, or a pump ; not even a perennial spring ; 
rather say an artesian well, gushing out forever by hogs- 
heads, as if glad to escape from its load of superincum- 
bent clay ; or like those fountains of the great oil deep, 
w^hich are astonishing us all. To set Peter a-going was 
like tapping the Haggis in that Nox Ambrosiana, when 
Tickler fled to the mantel-piece, and "The Shepherd" 
began stripping himself to swim; the imperial Christo- 
pher warding oW the tide with his crutch in the manner 
and with the success of Mrs. Partington, — so rich, so all- 
encompassing, so " finely confused " was his flood of 
Rabelaisian fun. I dare say most of us know the trick 
played him by his old chum, John Lockhart (what a con- 
trast in mind and body, in eye and vDice !) when review- 
ing his friend's trashy " Gleams of Thought " in the 
Quarterly^ how he made the printer put into the copy for 
the poet this epitaph, — 



390 "IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

" Here lies that peerless paper-lord, Lord Peter, 
Who broke the laws of God and man and metre." 

There were eight or ten more lines, but Peter destroyed 
them in his wrath. 

In the region of wild burlesque, where the ridiculous, 
by its intensity and mass, becomes the sublime, I never 
met any one to approach " Peter," except our amazing 
Medea-Robson. He could also abate a tiresome prig as 
effectually as Sydney Smith or Harry Cockburn, though 
in a different and ruder way. He had face for anything ; 
and this is by half (the latter half) the secret of success 
in joking, as it is in more things. Many of us — glum, 
mute, and inglorious as we are — have jokes, which, if 
we could but do them justice, and fire them off with a 
steady hand and eye, would make great havoc ; but, like 
the speeches we all make to ourselves when returning 
from our Debating Society, — those annihilating replies, 
those crushing sarcasms, — they are only too late, and a 
day after the fair. But Lord Peter had no misgivings. 
When quite a lad, though even then having that spacious 
expanse of visage, that endless amount of face, capable 
of any amplitude of stare, like a hillside, and a look of 
intentional idiocy and innocance, at once appalling and 
touching, — at a dinner-party, the mirth of which was be- 
ing killed by some Oxford swell, who was forever talking 
Greek and quoting his authorities, — Peter who was op- 
posite him, said, with a solemnity amounting to awe : 
*' Not to interrupt you, sir ! but it strikes me that Di- 
onysius of Halicarnassus is against you," keeping his eyes 
upon his victim with the deepest seriousness, — eyes like 
ordinary eyes seen close to the big end of an opera-glass 
of great magnifying power, opalescent, with fluctuating 
blinks, as if seen through water, the lamps as of some 



"IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 391 

huge sea moon- calf on the gambol through its deep. The 
prig reeled, but recovered, and said : " If I mistake not, 
sir, Dionysius of Halicarnassus was dead ninety or so 
years before my date." " To be sure, he was. I very 
much beg your pardon, sir ; I always do make that mis- 
take ; I meant Thaddeus of Warsaw I " 

But, indeed, there was the sad thing, — that which is 
so touchingly referred to by Sydney Smith in his lecture 
on Wit and Humor, — he became the slave of his own 
gifts. He gravitated downwards ; and life and law, 
friends and everything, existed chiefly to be joked on. 
Still, he was a mighty genius in his own line, and more, 
as I have said, like Falstaff than any man out of Shake- 
speare. There is not much said or done by that worthy 
— "that irregular humorist," "that damned Epicurean 
rascal," " a goodly, portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent, 
of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble pres- 
ence " — which Peter might not have said and done, from 
the wildest, grossest joke up to " babbling of green fields " ; 
for " Peter " had a gentle, sweet, though feeblose, and too 
pften falsetto, strain of poetic feeling and fancy. 

In active or receptive imagination, Logan was infinitely 
above him ; he had far too much of the true stuiBP and 
sense of poetry ever to have written the " Gleams of 
Thought " which their author, and, of course, no one else, 
thought not only poetry, but that of the purest water. 

Can an unpoetical man have poetic dreams ? I doubt 
if he can. Your ordinary man may dream the oddest, 
wildest, laughablest, funniest nonsense. He will not 
likely dream such a dream as the one I have recorded. 
Shakespeare might have dull dreams, but I question if 
Mr. Tupper could have dreamt of a Midsummer Night's 
Dream, any more than a man will speak a language k 
his sleep he never learned or heard. 



392 "IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

If the master of the house is asleep, and some imp of 
darkness and misrule sets to playing all sorts of tricks, turn- 
ing everything topsy-turvy, ransacking all manner of hid- 
den places, making every kind of grotesque conjunction, 
and running riot in utter incongruity and drollness, he 
still must be limited to what he finds in the house, — to 
his master's goods and chattels. So I believe is it with 
dreams ; the stuff they are made of lies ready made, is 
all found on the premises to the imp's hand ; it is for him 
to weave it into what fantastic and goblin tapestry he 
may. The kaleidoscope can make nothing of anything 
that is not first put in at the end of the tube, though no 
mortal can predict what the next shift may be. Charles 
Lamb was uneasy all the time he was at Keswick visiting 
Sou they ; and he escaped to London and " the sweet se- 
curity of streets " as fast as the mail could carry him, 
confessing afterwards that he slept ill " down there," and 
was sure " those big fellows," who were always lying all 
about, Skiddaw and Helvellyn, " came down much nearer 
him at night and looked at him ! " So we often feel as if 
in the night of the body and the soul, when the many- 
eyed daylight of the pure reason is gone, heights and 
depths, and many unspeakable things, come into view, 
looming vaster, and deeper, and nearer in that camera-ob- 
scura^ when the shutters are shut and the inner lights lit, 
and 

" When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
We summon up remembrance of things past," 

and often play such fantastic tricks. But the dreamer 
is the same ens rationis^ the same unus quis, as the wak- 
ing man who tells the dream. Philip who was drunk, 
and Philip who is sober and remembers his lapse, is one 
Philip. So it is only an imaginative man who can have 



"IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 393 

imaginative dreams. You must first put in before you 
can take out. As Samson long ago put it to the Philis- 
tines, " Out of the eater comes forth meat ; out of the 
strong comes forth the sweetness." No food like lion's 
marrow ; no tenderness like the tenderness of a strong na- 
ture. Or as old Fuller, with a noticeable forecasting of 
the modern doctrine of foods, as delivered by Prout and 
all the doctors, has it, " Omne par nutrit suum par ; the 
vitals of the body are most strengthened by feeding on 
such foods as are likest unto them," — a word this of 
warning as well as good cheer. He that sows to the flesh, 
and he who sows to the spirit, need not doubt what they 
are severally to reap. We all, more or less, sow to both ; 
it is the plus that makes the difference between others 
and ourselves, and between our former and present selves. 

I might give instances of my friend's wit and humor ; 
but I could not, in trying to do so, do him anything but 
injustice. His jokes were all warm and at once. He 
did not load his revolver before going to dinner, and dis- 
charge all its barrels at his friends. His fun arose out 
of the sociality of the hour, and was an integral part of 
it ; and he never repeated his jokes. He did not pick up 
his bullet and pocket it and fire it off again. But I re- 
member well his first shot at me, — it was not bad for 
nineteen. He and I were coming down the Bridges from 
college, and I saw an unkempt, bareheaded Cowgate boy, 
fluttering along in full-blown laughter and rags. He had 
a skull like Sir Walter's, round and high. I said, 
" Logan, look at that boy's head, — did you ever see the 
like of it ? it 's like a tower." " Yes, at any rate a for- 
talice." 

You know the odd shock of a real joke going off like 
a pistol or a sqnib at your ear. It goes through you. 
17* 



394 "IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

That same week another quite as good squib went off in 
church. A cousin, now long dead, was listening with me 
to a young preacher-puppy, whose sermon was one tissue 
of unacknowledged plagiarisms of the most barefaced 
kind. We were doing little else than nudge each other 
as one amazing crib succeeded another, — for this ass 
did know his masters' crib. William whispered to me, 
" Look at him ! I declare his very whiskers are curving 
into inverted commas " ; and it was true, such was the 
shape of his whiskers, that his face, and especially his 
grinning and complacent mouth, which they embraced, 
looked one entire quotation. 

Lord Brougham and many others think that dreaming 
occurs only between sleeping and waking, — the stepping 
of the soul into or out of the land of forgetfulness, — and 
that it is momentary in its essence and action, though 
often ranging over a lifetime or more, — 

" Brief as the lightning in the bellied night 
That in a spleen reveals both earth and heaven." 

There is much in favor of this. One hopes the soul — 
animula^ llandulaj vagula — may sometimes sleep the 
dreamless sleep of health, as well as its tired drudge. 
Dreaming may be a sort of dislocation of our train of 
ideas, a sort of jumble as it is shunted off the main line 
into its own siding at the station for the night. The train 
may stop there and then, for anything we know ; but it 
may not, for the like reason the telegraph-office is not 
open during night. Ideality, imagination, that sense of the 
merely beautiful and odd which delights to marry all sorts 
of queer couples, — which entertains the rest of the 
powers, when they are tired, or at their meals, telling them 
and making them stories, out of its own head, — this 



"IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 395 

family poet, and minstrel, and mime, whom we all keep, 
has assuredly its wildest, richest splendors at the breaking 
up of the company for the night, or when it arouses them 
on the morrow, when it puts out or lets in the lights ; for 
many a dream awakes us, " scattering the rear of dark- 
ness thin." 

In optics, if you make a hole in the shutter at noon, 
or stick a square bit of blackness on the pane, and make 
the rays from the hole or around the square to pass 
through a prism, then we have, if we let them fall on 
whiteness and catch them right, those colors we all know 
and rejoice in, that Divine spectrum^ — 



as 



" Still young and fine," 

" When Terah, Nahor, Har^, Abram, Lot, 
The youthful world's gray fathers in one knot, 
Did with attentive looks watch every hour 
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower." 

The white light of heaven — lumen siccum — opens 
itself out as it were, tells its secret, and lies like a glori- 
ous border on the Edge o' Dark (as imaginative Lanca- 
shire calls the twilight, as we Scotchmen call it the Gloam- 
in'), making the boundaries between light and darkness 
a border of flowers, made out by each. Is there not 
something to think of in "the Father of lights" thus 
beautifying the limits of His light, and of His darkness, 
which to Him alone is light, so that here burns a sort of 
« dim religious light," — a sacred glory, — where we may 
take off our shoes and rest and worship? Is not our 
light rounded with darkness, as our life is with a dream ? 
and, the greater the area of our light, of our truth, won 
from the vast and formless Infinite, the ampler, too, is the 
outer ring, — the iridescent edge lying upon the Unknown, 



396 "IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

— making a rainbow round the central throne of the 
EternaL And is not the light of knowledge, after all, the 
more lovely, the more full of color, and the more pleasant 
to the eye, when lying on and indicating what is beyond, 
and past all finding out, making glorious the skirts of 
" the majesty of darkness " ? It is at his rising out of, 
and his returning into " old night," that the sun is in the 
full flush of his plighted clouds, and swims in the depths 
of his "daffodil sky," making the outgoings of the even- 
ing and of the morning to rejoice before Him and us. 

But, thus talking of dreams, I am off into a dream ! 
A simile is not always even an illustration, much less an 
analogy, and more less an argument or proof. As you 
see, every one likes to tell his own dreams, — so long as 
he has them by the tail, which soon slips, — and few care 
to listen to them, not even one's wife, as Sir Walter found 
to his cost. And so, good-natured reader, let me end by 
asking you to take down the fourth volume of Crabbe's 
Works, and turning to page 116, read his " World of 
Dreams." It is the fashion now-a-days, when he is read 
at all, — which, I fear, is seldom, — to call Crabbe coarse, 
even dull, a mere sturdy and adroit versifier of prose as 
level as his native marshes, without one glimpse of the 
vision, one act of the faculty divine. Read these verses 
again, and ask yourself. Is this a daguerreotyper of the 
Boeotian crimes and virtues, the sorrows and the humors, 
of his dull, rich Essex and its coast ? I wish we had 
more of this manly imagination ; we have almost too much 
now of mere wing and color, mere flights, mere foliage, 
and, it may be, blossoms, — little fruit and timber. The 
imagination, like a gorgeous sunset, or a butterfly's wing, 
tells no story, has no backbone, is forever among the 
clouds and flowers, or down deep in denial and despair. 



"IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION.'* 397 

The imagination should inform, and quicken, and flush, 
and compact, and clarify the entire soul ; and it should 
come home from circling in the azure depths of air, and 
have its " seat in reason, and be judicious," and be a bird 
rather than a butterfly, or firefly, or huge moth of night. 

Many months after this little notice appeared, Mrs. 
Logan gave me the following fragment found in her hus- 
band's desk, — from which it appears he had begun to put 
his dream into form : — 

JUDAS THE BETRAYER,— HIS ENDING. 

*T is noon, — yet desolate and dim 

The lonely landscape lies ; 
For shortly after day begun, 
Betwixt it and the mounting sun, 

A cloud went crawling up the skies. 
From the sea it rose all slowly, — 
Thin, and gray, and melancholy, — 

But gathered blackness as it went; 
Till, when at noon the stately sun 

Paused on his steep descent, 
This ghastly cloud had coiled itself 

Before his beamy tent : 
Where like a conscious thing it lay, 
To shut from men the living day. 

And yet all vainly as it seemed ; 

For on each side, beyond its shade, 
The sweet, triumphant sunbeams gleamed, 

Rejoicing in the light they made. 
On all they shone except that dell, 
On which the shadow darkly fell. 
" bear me to yon mountain brow 

That I may look below ; 
All that is in that unblest dell 

Full fainly would I know. 
Why is the sun to it denied ? 
bear me to yon mountain side." 
We cleave the air, now we are there, 

And what is it you see ? 



398 "IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

" A little marsh, whence, low and harsh, 

A strange sound comes to me. 

I marvel what that sound may be, 
For strange it lights upon mine ear 5 
My heart it fills with more than fear, 

With something of despair. 
This well I know, 't is not the sound 
Of any beast that walks the ground. 
Of any bird that skims the air." 
Right well you guess, for 'tis the wail 
Of a lost soul in endless bale, — 
The reward of mortal sinning, — 
Endless bale, but now beginning; 
Nay, do not turn away your eyes, 

For long before the sun now shining 

Shall be towards yonder world declining, 
In that low dell the Lord's Betrayer dies. 

With fearful horror and surprise 
On that low dell I fixed mine eyes. 
The hills came down on every side. 

Leaving a little space between. 
The ground of which, scarce five roods wide, 

Was of a cold rank green ; 
And where it sloped down to the fen, - 

Built part of reeds and part of wood, 

A low half-ruined hut there stood, — 
For man no home, for beast no* den, — 
Yet through the openings might be seen 
The moving of a form within. 

By this the sound had passed away. 

And silence like a garment lay 

A moment on the little lake. 

* * * * whose surface spake 

No tale of wakening breeze or sun. 

But choked with reeds all rank and dun; 

Which seemed to me as if they stirred 

And shivered, though no wind was heard ; 

They gave a shrill and mournful sound,— 
'T was like, and yet unlike, the sighing 
You hear in woods when the year is dying. 

And leaves lie thickly on the ground. 



"IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 399 

As creepingly my ear it sought, 
It might be fancy, yet methought 
That, of all sounds that live in air, 
This sounded likest to despair. 

All the while, 
Close by the hut a great white dove, 
( sight of wonder and of love ! ) 

Sits with a quiet and brooding air, — 
White, and of none other hue. 
By its deep yearning eyes of blue, 
And by no sign beside, I knew 

It was a guardian spirit of air. 

What doth the lonely creature there ? 
(To each man by pitying Heaven 
One of these at birth is given ; 

And such their love and constancy. 
That through all depths of sin and sadness, 
Tempting hope and baffling madness, 

They ever, ever with us be. 
Nor, till proud despair we cherish, 
Will they leave our souls to perish.) 

What doth the lonely creature there ? 
" Yon spirit quitteth not his side 

To whom he hath been given. 
Whilst yet his heart has not defied 

The wrath and grace of Heaven, 
Nor can his guardian watch be broken 

Till this defiance shall be spoken 
By Judas the Betrayer." 

Hold on thy watch, thou blessed Bird ! 

One moment leave it not : 
A heart of faith even might be stirred 

To doubt in such a spot. 
Of him — the wretched traitor — friend, 

Thou long-forbearing dove ! 
Let no despairing words ofiend 

Thy faithfulness and love ; 
For in the dark extremes of ill 
The tongue will disobey the will, 
And words of sin the lips will part. 
Whilst holy feelings fill the heart ! 



400 "IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION." 

It is another bird, — and lo ! 

Rounding the corner of the hut, 
It Cometh silently and slow 

With outstretched head and eyes half shut. 
The feathers do not hide its skin ; 
Long is its neck, its legs are thin, — 
'T is plain there is no health within. 
It is the bird whose song so harsh, 

But lately sore dismayed me: 
Upward it walketh from the marsh, 

It treadeth cunningly. 
Too foul it is and melancholy 

To live on the upper ground ; 
And I know it for a thing unholy, 

On some bad errand bound. 

It rounds the corner of the hut. 

It stops and peers upon the dove : 
The unconscious creature sees it not, 

So full are its two eyes with love. 
On the dove it peers, and its head the while 

It pusheth out and it draweth in ; 
And it smileth, if that a bird may smile. 

At the thought and hope of a joyous sin. 
In a moment it thrusts its grisly neck 

With a silent jerk into the lake; 
In a moment it lifteth itself erect. 

And, in its bill, a snake. 
The snake is round, and small, and cold, 
And as full of venom as it can hold. 

With three long steps, all without noise. 

Close to the dove it cometh : 
That dreams no ill, for the while its voice 

A sweet, low music hummeth. 
To the dove's fair neck with a gentle peck 

His long bill he applies : 
At the touch and the sound the dove turns round 

With a look of meek surprise, — 
'T is but one look, for swift as thought 
That snaky neck is round its throat. 

* * * * ♦ 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 




A JACOBITE FAMILY. 




ID you ever, when journeying along a road at 

night, look in curiously at some cottage window, 

and, like a happier Enoch Arden, watch unseen 

the bright life within, and all the naive ongoings 

of the household ? 

Such a glimpse of the inner life of a Jacobite family, 
in the latter half of last century, we have had the privi- 
lege of enjoying, and we wish we could tell our readers 
half as vividly what it has told to us. We shall try. 

On the river Don, in Aberdeenshire, best known to the 
world by its Auld Brig, which Lord Byron, photography, 
and its own exceeding beauty have made famous, is the 
house of Stoneywood, four miles from the sea. It was 
for many generations the property of the Lords Frazer 
of Muchals, now Castle Frazer, one of the noblest of the 
many noble castles in that region, where some now name- 
less architect has left so many memorials of the stately 
life of their strong-brained masters, and of his own quite 
singular genius for design. 

Stoneywood was purchased near the close of the six- 
teenth century, from the Lord Frazer of that time, by 
John Moir of Ellon, who had sold his own estate, as tra- 
dition tells, in the following way: — Bailie Gordon, a 
wealthy Edinburgh merchant, made a bargain with the 



404 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

Laird of Ellon, when in his cups, to sell his estate at a 
price greatly under its value. Gordon, the son of a far- 
mer in Bourtie, was progenitor of the Gordons of Haddo, 
afterwards Earls of Aberdeen. The country folk, who 
lamented the passing away of the old family, and resented 
the trick of the bailie, relieved themselves by pronoun- 
cing their heaviest malediction, and prophesying some near 
and terrible judgment. Strangely enough, the curse, in 
the post hoc sense, was not causeless. A short time after 
the purchase an awful calamity befell Mr. Gordon's family. 
Its story has been told by a master pen, that which gave 
us Matthew Wold and Adam Blair^ and the murderer 
M'Kean, We give it for the benefit of the young gener- 
ation, which, we fear, is neglecting the great writers of 
the past in the wild relish and exuberance of the too co- 
pious present. It will be an evil day when the world 
only reads what was written yesterday and will be for- 
gotten to-morrow. 

" Gabriel was a preacher or licentiate of the Klirk, employed 
as domestic tutor in a gentleman's family in Edinburgh, where 
he had for pupils two fine boys of eight or ten years of age. 
The tutor entertained, it seems, some partiality for the Abigail 
of the children's mother ; and it so happened that one of his 
pupils observed him kiss the girl one day in passing through an 
anteroom, where she was sitting. The little fellow carried 
this interesting piece of intelHgence to his brother, and 
both of them mentioned it, by way of a good joke, to their 
mother the same evening. Whether the lady had dropped 
some hint of what she had heard to her maid, or whether she 
had done so to the preacher himself, I have not learned ; 
but so it was, that he found he had been discovered, and by 
what means also. The idea of having been detected in such a 
trivial trespass was enough to poison forever the spirit of this 
juvenile Presbyterian. His whole soul became filled with the 
blackest demons of rage, and he resolved to sacrifice to his in- 



A JACOBITE FA]VnLY. 405 

dignation the instruments of what he conceived to be so deadly 
a disgrace. It was Sunday, and after going to church as usual 
with his pupils, he led them out to walk in the country, — for 
the ground on which the New Town of Edinburgh now stands 
was then considered as the country by the people of Edinburgh. 
After passing calmly, to all appearance, through several of the 
green fields which have now become streets and squares, he 
came to a place more lonely than the rest, and there, draw- 
ing a large clasp-knife from his pocket, he at once stabbed the 
elder of his pupils to the heart. The younger boy gazed on 
him for a moment, and then fled with shrieks of terror ; but the 
murderer pursued with the bloody knife in his hand, and slew 
him also as soon as he was overtaken. The whole of this 
shocking scene was observed distinctly from the Old Town by 
innumerable crowds of people, who were near enough to see 
every motion of the murderer, and hear the cries of the in- 
fants, although the deep ravine between them and the place of 
blood was far more than sufficient to prevent any possibility of 
rescue. The tutor sat down upon the spot, immediately after 
having concluded his butchery, as if in a stupor of despair and 
madness, and was only roused to his recollection by the touch 
of the hands that seized him. 

" It so happened that the magistrates of the city were as- 
sembled together in their council-room, waiting till it should 
be time for them to walk to church in procession (as is their 
custom), when the crowd drew near with their captive. The 
horror of the multitude was communicated to them, along with 
their intelligence, and they ordered the wretch to be brought 
at once into their presence. It is an old law in Scotland, that 
when a murderer is caught in the very act of guilt (or, as they 
call it, red-hand)^ he may be immediately executed, without 
any formality or delay. Never surely could a more fitting 
occasion be found for carrying this old law into effect. Ga- 
briel was hanged within an hour after the deed was done, the 
red knife being suspended from his neck, and the blood of the 
innocents scarcely dry upon his fingers." * 

* Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, Vol. II. 



406 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

The boys were the sons of the new Laird of Ellon. It 
adds something to the dreadfulness of the story that it 
was the woman who urged the wretched youth to the 
deed. We remember well this GahrieVs Road^ the lane 
leading up past "Ambrose's," the scene of the famous 
Nodes. It is now covered by the new Register Office 
buildings. 

But to return to the ex-Laird of Ellon. Mr. Moir, hav- 
ing lost one estate, forthwith set about acquiring another, 
and purchased Castle Frazer, its lord having got into 
difficulties. The lady of the Castle, loath, we doubt not, 
to leave her " bonnie house," persuaded Mr. Moir to take 
instead the properties of Stoneywood, Watterton, Clin- 
terty, and Greenburn, on Don side, which were afterwards 
conjoined under the name of the barony of Stoneywood. 
The grateful Lady of Frazer sent along with the title- 
deeds a five-guinea gold-piece, — a talisman which was 
religiously preserved for many generations. 

The family of Stoneywood seem, from the earliest rec- 
ord down to their close, to have been devotedly attached 
to the house of Stuart. In the old house there long hung 
a portrait of Bishop Juxon, who attended Charles I. on 
the scaffold, and through this prelate must have come 
a still more precious relic, long preserved in the family, 
and which is now before us, — the Bible which the doomed 
King put into the hands of the Bishop on the scaffold, with 
the word " Remember," having beforehand taken off his 
cloak and presented it and the insignia of the Garter to 
the same faithful minister and friend ; this is one of our 
glimpses. We have the sacred and royal book before us 
now, — a quarto, printed in 1637, bound in blue velvet, 
and richly embroidered and embossed with gold and silver 
lace. There is the crown and the Prince of Wales's 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 407 

feathers, showing it had belonged to Charles 11. when 
prince. He must have given it to his hapless father, as 
the C. P. is changed into C. R. Though faded, it looks 
princely still. 

One of its blank leaves, on which was written " Charles 
Stuart ano. dom. 1649," was, along with the gold-piece, 
pilfered as follows : — 

" Miss Moir, who was rather of an unaccommodating tem- 
per, remained alone at Stoneywood for a year longer, and in 
fact until the sale had been completed, and it became neces- 
sary to quit. The retired and solitary Hfe she led during this 
last period was taken advantage of by a woman in her service, 
of the name of Margaret Grant, to commit various thefts, with 
the assistance of a paramour, who happened unfortunately to, 
be a blacksmith. By his means they got the charter-chest 
opened, and abstracted thence the prophetic gold-piece, gifted 
by Lady Fraser two hundred years before, and also Bishop 
Juxon's valuable legacy of King Charles's Bible, presented to 
him on the scaffold. The gold-piece was readily made availa- 
ble, and was, of course, never recovered ; but the Bible proved 
to be a more difficult treasure to deal with, it being generally 
known in the county to be an heirloom of the Stoneywood 
family, and accordingly, when she offered it for sale in Aber- 
deen, she became aware that she was about to be detected. She 
took the precaution to abscond, and suspecting that mischief 
might come of so sacrilegious a thefl, she came by night to 
Stoneywood, and deposited the Bible at the foot of a large 
chestnut-tree which overshaded the entrance of the front court 
of the house, where it was found next morning. However, it 
did not return altogether unscathed by its excursion, for a 
bookseller in Aberdeen, to whom it had been offered for sale, 
had the cunning, or rather the rascality, to abstract the blank 
leaf on which the royal martyr's autograph was inscribed, 
which he managed to paste upon another old Bible so dex- 
terously as not to be easily discovered, and actually profited 



408 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

by Ms fraud, In disposing of his counterfeit Bible to the Earl 
of Fife for a large sum of money, and in whose library it now 
figures as King Charles's Bible, while the original still remains 
in the possession of the representative of the family to whom 
it descended by inheritance, and in its appearance bears ample 
testimony to its authenticity." 

To go back to Stoneywood. The Laird is now there ; 
his eldest son, James, has married Jane, eldest daughter 
of Erskine of Pittoderie, and the young bride has got 
from her mother a green silk purse with a thousand merks 
in it, and the injunction never to borrow from the purse 
except in some great extremity, and never to forget to 
put in from time to time what she could spare, however 
small, ending with the wish, " May its sides never meet." 
The daughter was worthy of the mother, and became a 
^'fendy wife," as appears by the following picturesque 
anecdote. Young Moir was going to the neighboring vil- 
lage of Greenburn to the fair to buy cattle ; the green 
purse was in requisition, and his wife, then nursing her 
first child, went with him. While he was making his 
market, she remained outside, and observing a tidy young 
woman sitting by the roadside, suckling her child, she 
made up to her and sat down by her side. Waiting, she 
soon got as hungry for her own baby as doubtless it was 
for her, so proposed to comfort herself by taking the 
woman's child. This was done, the young mother con- 
sidering it a great honor to have a leddy's milk for her 
baby. Mrs. Moir, not wishing to be disturbed or recog- 
nized, had the woman's cloak thrown over her head, she 
setting off into the fair to see what her husband was 
about. She was hardly gore, when a man came suddenly 
behind Mrs. Moir, and hastily lifting up the corner of the 
})laid, threw something into her lap, saying, " Tak' tent 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 409 

o' that ! " and was off before Mrs. Moir could see his face. 
In her lap was the green purse with all its gear un- 
touched ! 

Embarrassed with her extempore nursling and cloak, 
she could not go to her husband, but the young woman 
returning, she went at once in search; and found him 
concluding a bargain for some cows. He asked her to 
wait outside the tent till he settled with the dealer ; in 
they went ; presently a cry of consternation ; in goes the 
purse-bearer, counts out the money, tables it, and taking 
her amazed " man " by the arm, commanded him to go 
home. 

What a pleasant little tale Boccaccio, or Chaucer, or 
our own Dunbar would have made of this ! 

From it you may divine much of the character of this 
siccar wife. Ever afterwards when the Stoneywood 
couple left home they confided the purse to their body 
servant, John Gunn ; for in those days no gentleman 
travelled without his purse of gold; and although we 
have a shrewd guess that this same John was in the secret 
of the theft and the recovery of the purse on the fair 
day, he was as incorruptible ever afterwards as is Mr. 
Gladstone with our larger purse. 

This John Gunn was one of those now extinct func- 
tionaries who, like the piper, were the lifelong servants 
of the house, claiming often some kindred with the chief, 
and with entire fidelity and indeed abject submission, 
mingling a familiarity, many amusing instances of which 
are given in Dean Ramsay's book, and by Miss Stirling 
Graham. John, though poor, had come of gentle blood, 
the Gunns of Ross-shire ; he went into the army, from 
which, his Highland pride being wounded by some affront, 
he deserted, and joined a band of roving gypsies called 
18 



410 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

Cairds.* His great strength and courage soon made 
John captain of his band, which for years levied black- 
mail over the county of Aberdeen. 

* We all remember Sir Walter's song; doubtless our John Gnnn was 
" a superior person," but there must have been much of the same 
fierce, perilous stuff in him, and the same fine incoherence in his 
transactions : — 

" Donald Caird can lilt and sing, 

Blithely dance the Highland fling; 

Drink till the gudeman be blind, 

Fleech till the gudewife be kind; 

Hoop a leglan, clout a pan, 

Or crack a pow wi' ony man ; 

Tell the news in brugh and glen, 

Donald Caird 's come again. 

"' *' Donald Caird can wire a maukin, 

Kens the wiles o' dun-deer staukin ; 
Leisters kipper, makes a shift 
To shoot a muir-fowl i' the drift: 
Water-bailiffs, rangers, keepers. 
He can wauk when they are sleepers ; 
Not for bountith, or reward, 
Daur they mell wi' Donald Caird. 

" Donald Caird can drink a gill, 
Fast as hostler- wife can fill ; 
Ilka ane that sells gude liquor. 
Kens how Donald bends a bicker : 
When he 's fou he 's stout and saucy, 
Keeps the cantle o' the causey; 
Highland chief and Lawland laird 
Maun gie way to Donald Caird. 

" Steek the awmrie, lock the kist, 
Else some gear will sune be mist; 
Donald Caird finds orra things 
Where Allan Gregor fand the tings : 
Dunts o' kebbuck, taits o' woo. 
Whiles a hen and whiles a soo ; 
Webs or duds frae hedge or yard — 
'Ware the wuddie, Donald Caird! " 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 411 

John got tired of his gypsy life, and entered Stoney- 
wood's service, retaining, however, his secret headship of 
the Cairds, and using this often in Robin Hood fashion, 
generously, for his friends. So little was this shady side 
of his life known in the countryside, that his skill in de- 
tecting theft and restoring lost property was looked upon 
as not " canny," and due to " the second sight." 

On one occasion Mr. Grant, younger of Ballindalloch, 
was dining at Stoneywood. He was an officer in the 
Dutch Brigade, and had come home to raise men for a 
company, which only wanted tw^elve of its complement. 
He was lamenting this to Mr. Moir, who jocularly re- 
marked, that " if John Gunn," who was standing behind 
his chair, " canna help ye, deil kens wha can." Upon 
which John asked Mr. Grant when he could have his 
men ready to ship to Holland. " Immediately," was the 
reply. " Weel a weel, Ballindalloch, tak' yer road at 
aince for Aberdeen, tak' out a passage for them and 
twelve mair, and send me word when ye sail, and, if ye 
keep it to yoursell, ye '11 find your ither men a' ready." 
Mr. Grant knew his man, and made his arrangements. 
The twelve men made their appearance with John at 
their head. When they found what was their destina- 
tion they grumbled, but John, between fleeching and flyt- 
ing, praised them as a set of strapping fellows ; told them 
they would soon come back again with their pockets full 
of gold. They went and never returned, finding better 
quarters abroad, and thus John got rid of some of his 
secret confederates that were getting troublesome. 

Another of John's exploits was in a difierent line. 
Mr. Moir had occasion to go to London, taking John with 
him of course. He visited his friend the Earl of Win- 
toun, then under sentence of death in the Tower for his 



412 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

concern in the rebellion of 1715. The Earl was arrang- 
ing his affairs, and the family books and papers had been 
allowed to be carried into his cell in a large hamper, 
which went and came as occasion needed. John, who 
was a man of immense size and strength, undertook, if the 
Earl put himself, instead of his charters, into the hamper, 
to take it under his arm as usual, and so he did, walking 
lightly out. Lord Wintoun retired to Rome, where he 
died in 1749. 

On " the rising " in the '45 John joined young Stoney- 
wood, his master's son, but before telling his adventures 
in that unhappy time, we must go back a bit. 

The grandson of old Stoneywood, James, born in 1710, 
was now a handsome young man, six feet two in height, 
and of a great spirit. As his grandfather and father 
were still alive, he entered into foreign trade ; his mother, 
our keen friend of the green purse, meantime looking out 
for a rich marriage for her son, fixed on Lady Christian, 
daughter of the Earl of Buchan, and widow of Eraser of 
Eraser ; but our young Tertius liked not the widow, nor 
his cousin of Pittoderie, though her father offered to 
settle his estate on him ; Lord Eorbes's daughter, with a 
tocher of forty thousand merks, was also scorned. And 
all for the same and the best reason. He was in love 
with his cousin, Margaret Mackenzie of Ardross. It was 
the old story, — liehend und gelieht But their " bright 
thing," though it did not in the end " come to confusion," 
did not for a time " run smooth." Thomas, his brother, 
a sailor, was likewise bewitched by the lovely cousin. 
He was refused, found out the reason, and in his rage 
and jealousy intercepted the letters between the lovers for 
three long miserable years, James living all the time at 
Stoneywood, and she far away in Eoss-shire. The un- 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 413 

worthy sailor made his way to Ardross, asked Margaret 
and her sister why they did n't ask for James, and then 
told them he was just going to be married to Miss Ers- 
kine of Pittoderie, and to have the estate. Margaret, 
thus cruelly struck, said, " Thomas, ye know my bindin', 
I have been aye true ; I have angered my father, and 
refused a rich and a good man, and I '11 be true till James 
himsel' is fause " ; and like a frozen lily, erect on its stem, 
she left them — to pass her night in tears. 

James was as true as his Margaret ; and his grandfather 
and father agreed to his marriage, under a singular con- 
dition : the bulk of the rents were settled in annuity on 
the two seniors, and the estate made over to the young 
laird in fee-simple. The seniors did not long cumber him 
or the land ; they both died within the year. Straight- 
way James was off to Ardross to claim his Margaret. 
He came late at night, and " rispit at the ring." Rod- 
erick, the young laird, rose and let him in, sending a 
message to his sister to get a bedroom ready for his cous- 
in Stoneywood. Miss Erskine, of Pittoderie, was in 
the house as it so happened, and old Lady Ardross, in 
her ignorance, thinking young Moir was after her, wrath- 
fuUy sent word to him that he must not disturb the fam- 
ily, but might share Roderick's bed. Poor Margaret 
said little and slept less, and coming down before the rest 
in the early morning to make ready the breakfast, she 
found her cousin there alone : they made good use of 
their time, we may be sure, and the cruel mystery about 
the letters was all cleared up. 

James and Thomas never met till they were both on 
the verge of the grave ; the old men embraced, forgiving 
and forgiven. 

The lovers were married at Ardross in September, 



414 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

1740, and they came to Stoneywood, where our stern old 
lady gloomed upon them in her displeasure, and soon left 
them to live in Aberdeen, speaking to her son at church, 
but never once noticing his lovely bride. For all this he 
made far more than up by the tenderest love and service. 
We quote the touching words of their descendant : " With 
the only recollection I have of my grandfather and grand- 
mother in extreme old age, their sedate and primitive 
appearance, and my veneration for them, makes the 
perusal of the very playful and affectionate letters which 
passed betwixt them at this early period of their lives to 
me most amusing and comic." But between these times 
there intervened long years of war, and separation, perils 
of all kinds, exile, and the deaths of seven lusty sons in 
their prime. 

We have seen a portrait of Mrs. Moir in her prime, in 
the possession of her great-grandson ; it shows her come- 
ly, plump, well-conditioned, restful, debonair, — just the 
woman for the strenuous, big Stoney wood's heart to safely 
trust in. 

Soon after his marriage, young Stoneywood had a vio- 
lent fever ; the mother and the cold sister came to his 
bedside, never once letting on that they saw his wife ; 
and Annie Caw, an old servant, many years after, used 
to say that " her heart was like to break to see the sweet 
young leddy stannin' the hale day in silence, pretendin' to 
look out at the garden, when the big saut draps were rin- 
nin' doon her bonnie cheeks." The old dame returned 
to Aberdeen at night without one word or look of sym- 
pathy. They had a daughter, — still the old lady was 
unmitigated, but a son made all sweet. 

Then came the stirring, fatal '45. Stoneywood, when 
laid up with a severe burn of the leg, received an express 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 415 

from the Countess of Errol, desiring his immediate at- 
tendance at Slains Castle. Lame as he was, he mounted 
his horse and rode to Slains, where the Prince gave him 
a commission as lieutenant-colonel ; he found Gordon of 
Glenbucket there, having come from France, where he 
had lived in exile since the '15, his son with him, and 
though he was blind he joined the cause, so that there 
were then three generations of John Gordons under the 
Prince's banner, as sings the Jacobite doggrel : — 

" Nor, good Glenbucket, loyal throughout thy life, 
Wert thou ungracious in the manly fight. 
Thy chief degenerate, thou his terror stood. 
To vindicate the loyal Gordon's blood. 
The loyal Gordons, they obey the call, 
Resolved with their Prince to fight or fall." 

Stoneywood, from his great strength and courage, and 
his entire devotedness to the cause, was a man of mark. 
Walking down the Broad Street of Aberdeen, he was 
fired at from a window by one Rigg, a barber. Mr. Moir 
called up to him to " come down, and he 'd have fair play 
afore the townsmen," an invitation il Barbiere dechned. 
Before joining the Prince, Stoneywood, with characteris- 
tic good sense and forethought, took a step which, if oth- 
ers had done, the forfeiture and ruin of many families 
would have been spared : he executed a formal Commis- 
sion of Factory over his whole lands in favor of his wife. 
On the utter collapse of the enterprise at Culloden, he 
made his way from Ruthven, near Kingussie, through 
the wilds of Braemar, and reached his own house — then 
filled with English troops — at midnight. Leaping over 
the garden-wall, he tapped at his wife's window, the only 
room left to her, and in which slept the children, and her 
faithful maid Anne Caw. She was lying awake, — " a' 
the lave were sleeping," — heard the tap, and, though in 



416 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

strange disguise, she at once knew the voice and the 
build to be her husband's. He had been without sleep 
for four nights ; she got him quietly to bed without wak- 
ing any one in the room. Think of the faithful young 
pair, not daring even to speak ; for Janet Grant the wet- 
nurse, was not to be trusted, — a price was on his head ! 

Stoneywood left late the next evening, intending to 
cross the Don in his own salmon-boat, but found it drawn 
up on the other side, by order of Paton of Grandholm, a 
keen Hanoverian. Stoneywood called to the miller's man 
to cross with the boat. " And wha' are ye ? " "I 'm 
James Jamieson o' Little Mill," one of his own farmers. 
" Jamieson " was a ready joke on his father's name. 

Stoneywood made for Buchan, where he lay for months, 
being hunted day and night. Here he was joined by our 
redoubtable friend John Gunn, who, having left his 
father's service some time before, had gone into his old 
line, and had been tried before the Circuit Court at Aber- 
deen, and would have fared ill had Stoneywood not got 
an acquittal. This made John more attached than ever. 
He said he would stick to his Colonel, and so he and his 
gypsy wife did. She continued to carry letters and money 
between Stoneywood and his wife, by concealing them 
under the braiding of her abundant black hair. So hot 
was the pursuit, that Stoneywood had to be conveyed 
over night to the house of a solitary cobbler, in the re- 
mote muirland. His name was Clarke. Even here he 
had to make a hole behind the old man's bed, where he 
hid himself when any one came to the door. It shows 
the energy of Stoneywood's character, and his light- 
heartedness, that he set to work under the old cobbler to 
learn his craft, and to such good purpose, that his master 
said, — " Jeeras, my man, what for did ye no tell me ye 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 417 

nad been bred a sutor ? " " And so I was, freend, but to 
tell ye God's truth, I was an idle loon, gey weel-faured, 
and ower fond o' the lassies, so I joined the Prince's boys, 
and ye see what 's come o' 't ! " This greatly pleased old 
Clarke, and they cobbled and cracked away cheerily for 
many any hour. So much for brains and will. On one 
occasion, when hard pressed by their pursuers, Mr. Moir 
turned his cobbling to good account, by reversing his 
brother Charles's brogues, turning the heel to the toe, a 
loke requiring dexterity in the walker as well as in the 
artist. After many months of this risky life, to which 
that of a partridge with a poaching weaver from West 
Linton on the prowl, was a species of tranquillity, our gal- 
lant, strong-hearted friend, hearing that the Prince had 
escaped, left for Norway in a small sloop from the coast 
of Buchan, along with Glenbucket and Sir Alexander 
Bannerman. 

It was when living in these wilds that a practical joke 
of John Gunn's was played off, as follows : — 

" After the battle of CuUoden, James Moir lurked about 
in the wildest parts of Aberdeenshire to escape imprisonment. 
One day the Laird of Stoneywood, with a small party of 
friends and servants, was on the hill of Benochie engaged 
boihng a haggis for their dinner, when they were suddenly 
aware of a party of soldiers coming up the hill directly 
towards them. Flight was their only resource, but before 
leavir.g the fire John Gunn upset the pot, that their dinner 
might not be available to their enemies. Instead of bursting on 
the ground, the haggis rolled unbroken down the hill, towards 
the English soldiers, one of whom, not knowing what it was, 
caught it on his bayonet, thereby showering its contents 
over himself and his comrades ; on seeing which termination 
to the adventure, John Gunn exclaimed, * See there ! even 
the haggis, God bless her, can charge down hill.' " 

18* AA 



418 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

Sir Walter Scott must have heard the story from the 
same source as ours, and has used it in Waverley as fol- 
lows, missing of necessity the point of the bayonet and 
of the joke : — 

" The Highlanders displayed great earnestness to proceed 
instantly to the attack, Evan Dhu urging to Fergus, by way 
of argument, that * the sidier roy was tottering like an Qgg 
upon a staff, and that they had a' the vantage of the onset, 
for even a haggis (God bless her !) could charge down hill/ " 

The Duke of Cumberland, on his way north, quartered 
his men on the Jacobite chiefs. A troop of dragoons was 
billeted on Stoneywood, where their young English cap- 
tain fell ill, and was attended during a dangerous illness 
by the desolate and lovely wife. As soon as he was 
able, he left with his men for Inverness-shire, expressing 
his grateful assurance to Mrs. Moir, that to her he owed 
his life, and that he would never forget her. Some time 
after, when she was alone, one evening in April, not 
knowing what to fear or hope about her husband and her 
prince, a stone, wrapt in white paper, was flung into the 
darkening room. It was from the young Englishman, and 
told briefly the final disaster at Culloden, adding, " Stoney- 
wood is safe." He was then passing south with his men. 
She never saw him or heard of him again, but we dare say 
he kept his word : that face was not likely to be forgotten. 

Stoneywood, before leaving his native country, thanked, 
and as he could, rewarded, his faithful and humble shel- 
terers, saying he would not forget them. And neither 
he did. Five-and-twenty years afterwards he visited 
Bartlett's house, where he lay before he took to the cob- 
bler's. He found he had died. He took the widow and 
five children to Stoneywood, where they were fed and 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 419 

bred, the boys put to trades, and the girls given away 
when married, by the noble old Jacobite as a father. 

As for John Gunn, his master having gone, he took to 
his ancient courses, was tried, found guilty this time, and 
closed his life in Virginia. So ends his lesson. A wild 
fellow with wild blood, a warm heart, and a shrewd head, 
such a man as Sir Walter would have made an immortal, 
as good a match and contrast with the princely Stoney- 
wood, as Richie Moniplies with Nigel Oliphant, Sam 
Weller and Mr. Pickwick, Sancho and the Don, and those 
other wonderful complementary pairs, who still, and will 
forever, to human nature's delectation, walk the earth. 

We need not follow our Ulysses through his life in Den- 
mark and Norway. He carried thither, as Mr. James 
Jamieson, as into the cobbler's hut, his energy and up- 
rightness, his cheery and unforgetting heart, his strong 
senses and his strong body. He prospered at Gothenburg, 
and within a year sent for his Penelope ; he went at the 
King's request to Sweden, was naturalized, and had con- 
ferred on him a patent of nobility. 

Meantime he was arraigned in his own country before 
the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, and though 
he was known by all the country, and had been in most 
of the actions fought, only two witnesses appeared against 
him, and their testimony went to prove his having always 
kept his men from violence and plunder, which drew down 
from Lord Justice Miller the remark, that this was more 
to the honor of the accused than of the witnesses. 

In 1759, Mrs. Moir, out of fifteen children, had only 
two sons and two daughters surviving. She came across 
to Scotland, and settled in Edinburgh for their education. 
Her husband, broken in health and longing for home, 
after some difficulty obtained royal permission to return 



420 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

to Stoneywood, which he did in 1762. He died in 1782, 
aged seventy-two years, leaving his dear Margaret with 
her two daughters, all his seven sons having gone before 
him. 

Our beautiful old lady lived into this century, dying in 
1805, at the age of ninety-six, having retained her cheer- 
fulness *and good health, and a most remarkable degree 
of comeliness, to the last. Her teeth were still fresh and 
white, and all there, her lips ruddy, her cheeks suffused 
with as delicate a tint as when she was the rose and the 
lily of Ardross, gentle in her address, and with the same 
contented evenness of mind that had accompanied her 
through all her trials. We cannot picture her better 
than in her kinsman's loving, skilful words : — 

" Accustomed as I was to pass a few hours of every day of 
my frequent visits to Aberdeen during a good many of the 
latter years of the worthy old lady's life, the impression can 
never become obliterated ff om my recollection, of the neat, or- 
derly chamber in which, at whatever hour I might come, I 
was sure to see her countenance brighten up with afiection, 
and welcome me with the never-failing invitation to come and 
kiss her cheek. And there she sat in her arm-chair by the fire, 
deliberately knitting a white-thread stocking, which, so far as 
appeared to me, made wonderous slow progress in its manu- 
facture. Her ancient maid, Miss Anne Caw, who had been 
seventy years in her service, and shared all the ups and downs, 
and toils and dangers, of her eventful life, sat in a chair on the 
opposite side, knitting the counterpart to my grandmother's 
stocking, and with equal deliberation. Every now and then 
the maid was summoned from the kitchen to take up the loops 
which these purblind old ladies were ever and anon letting 
down. A cat (how much their junior I do not know) lay 
curled up on an old footstool, and various little rickety fly-ta- 
bles, with mahogany trellis- work around their edge, supporting 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 421 

a world of bizarre-looking china-ornaments, stood in different 
corners of the room. Every article of furniture had its ap- 
pointed position, as well as the old ladies themselves, who sat 
knitting away till the arrival of two o'clock, their dinner-hour. 
The only thing which seemed at all to disturb the habitual 
placidity of my grandmother, was on being occasionally startled 
by the noise Miss Caw unwittingly made ; for the latter, being 
as deaf as a post, was quite unconscious of the disturbance she 
at times occasioned, when, in her vain attempts to rectify some 
mishap in her knitting, she so thoroughly entangled her work 
as to be far beyond the power of her paralytic fingers to extri- 
cate, she would touch the bell, as she conceived, with a respect- 
ful gentleness, but in fact so as to produce a clatter as if the 
house had caught fire. My grandmother, too blind to perceive 
the cause of this startling alarm, would gently remonstrate, 
* O Annie, Annie, you make such a noise ! ' to which the an- 
cient virgin, who was somewhat short in temper, seldom hear- 
ing what was addressed to her, generally answered quite at 
cross purposes, and that with a most amusing mixture of re- 
spect and testiness, * Yes, meddam, dis yer leddieship never 
let down a steek ! ' My grandmother's memory, although 
rather confused as to the later events of her life, was quite 
prompt and tenacious in all the details of her early history, 
particularly the agitating period of 1 745, the circumstances of 
their long exile, and in fact everything seemed clear and 
distinct down to her husband's death, which was singularly 
marked as the precise point beyond which she herself even 
seemed to have no confidence in the accuracy of her recollec- 
tion. But as the early portion was far the most interesting, it 
became the unfailing theme on which she seemed to have 
as much pleasure in dilating as I had in listening to her 
tales. 

" I found it necessary, however, to be cautious of alluding to 
the present reigning family, which always discomposed her, as 
to the last she vehemently protested against their title to the 
throne. I was in the habit, when dining out, of occasionally 
paying an afternoon visit to her on my way to dinner, which 



422 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

was after tea with her, when she had entered upon the second 
chapter of her day's employment. For, as regularly as the hour 
of five came round, the card-table was set out, with all its Japan 
boxes of cards, counters, and Japan saucers for holding the 
pool, etc., and my grandmother and her old maid sat down to 
encounter each other at piquette, and so deliberate was the 
game as to occupy a considerable portion of the afternoon, as 
the war was not carried on without frequent interlocutory 
skirmishes, which much prolonged the contest. The one com- 
batant being so blind as to be incapable of ever distinguishing 
diamonds from hearts, or clubs from spades, while her oppo- 
nent, who saw sharply enough through a pair of spectacles, so 
balanced on the tip of her nose, as to be a matter of never- 
ending wonder to me how they kept their place, was so deaf 
as to have to guess at the purport of whatever was addressed 
to her, and as they both blundered, each in their own way, it 
gave rise to contretemps of never-ending recurrence, as the 
property of each trick was disputed. ' O Annie, Annie, ye 
are so deaf and so stupid.' * Yes, meddam, it 's a sair pity ye 
are so blind.' ' Well, well, Annie, I would rather be blind as 
deaf * Yes, meddam, it 's my trick.' But with all her testi- 
fless, there never was a more devoted creature to her mistress, 
and to the Stoneywood family, than that worthy old woman, 
Miss Caw. She was a meagre, ill-favored looking little per- 
sonage, much bent with old age, dressed in a rusty black silk 
gown, marvellously short in the skirt, but compensated by a 
lanky, weasel-shaped waist of disproportionate length, from 
which was suspended my grandfather's watch, of uncommonly 
large size, which had been left to her by legacy, and was 
highly valued, and on the other side her scissors and bunch of 
keys. These garments were usually surmounted by a small 
black bonnet, and, trotting about with her high-heeled shoes, 
which threw the centre of gravity so far forward, her resem- 
blance to a crow, or some curious bird of that class, was irre- 
sistibly striking, but having been once considered handsome, 
she was too jealous of her appearance ever to sujffer me to use 
my pencil on so tempting a subject ! She was the sister of a 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 423 

person of some note, Lady Jane Douglas's maid, whose evi- 
dence was so influential in the great Douglas Cause, and I 
think she informed me that her father had once been Provost 
of Perth, but that their family had after his death got reduced 
in circumstances. She had passed almost the whole of her 
life, which was not a short one, in the service of the Stoney- 
wood family. As to my grandmother, she was a perfect pic- 
ture of an old lady of the last century. Her fair comely 
countenance was encircled in a pure white close cap with a 
quilled border, over which was a rich black lace cap in the 
form in which several of Queen Mary's pictures represent her 
to have worn ; a gray satin gown with a laced stomacher, and 
deeply frilled hanging sleeves that reached the elbow ; and 
over her arms black lace gloves without fingers, or rather 
which left the fingers free for the ornament of rings ; about her 
shoulders a smaU black lace tippet, with high-heeled shoes, 
and small square silver buckles ; there were also buckles in 
the stomacher. From her waistband also was suspended a 
portly watch in a shagreen case, and on the opposite side was 
a wire-sheath for her knitting. Such was old Lady Stoney- 
wood. Her portrait, as well as that of her husband, having 
been accidentally destroyed, I am tempted to substitute in 
words some idea of her appearance." 

And now we. must leave our window and our bright 
glimpse into the family within, and go our ways. We 
might have tarried and seen much else, very different, but 
full of interest ; we might have seen by and by the entrance 
of that noble, homely figure, the greatest, the largest na- 
ture in Scottish literature, whose head and face, stoop and 
smile and lurr we all know, and who has filled, and will 
continue to fill, with innocent sunshine the young (ay, and 
the old) life of mankind. Sir Walter would have soon 
come in, with that manly, honest limp ; — and his earliest 
and oldest friend would be there with him, he whose 
words have just painted for us these two old companions 



424 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

in their cordial strife, and whose own evening was as 
tranquil, as beautiful, and nearly as prolonged, as that of 
the dear and comely lady of Stoney wood. 

As we said before, what material is here for a story ! 
There is the crafty Baihe and the " ower canty " Laird 
of Ellon ; the Sunday tragedy ; the young loves and sor- 
rows of James and Margaret ; the green purse and its 
gold-pieces shining through, and its " fendy " keeper ; the 
gallant Stoneywood, six foot two, bending in Slains be- 
fore his Prince ; John Gunn with his Cairds, and his 
dark-eyed, rich-haired wife ; the wild havoc of Culloden ; 
the wandering from Speyside to his own Don ; the tap 
at the midnight window, heard by the one unsleeping 
heart ; the brief rapture ; the hunted life in Buchan ; the 
cobbler with his 'prentice and their cracks ; " Mons. 
Jacques Jamieson^^ the honored merchant and Swedish 
nobleman ; the vanishing away of his seven sons into the 
land o' the leal ; Penelope, her Ulysses gone, living on 
with Anne Caw, waiting sweetly till her time of depart- 
ure and of reunion came. We are the better of stir- 
ring ourselves about these, the unknown and long time 
dead ; it quickens the capacity of receptive, realizing 
imagination, which all of us have more or less, and this 
waxes into something like an immediate and primary 
power, just as all good poetry makes the reader in a cer- 
tain sense himself a poet, finding him one in little, and 
leaving him one in much. 

So does any such glimpse into our common life, in its 
truth and depth and power, quicken us throughout, and 
make us tell living stories to ourselves ; leaves us stronger, 
sweeter, swifter in mind, readier for all the many things 
in heaven and on earth we have to do ; for we all have 
wings, though they are often but in bud, or blighted. 



A JACOBITE FAMILY. 425 

Sad is it for a man and for a nation when they are all 
unused, and therefore shrivel and dwine and die, or leave 
some sadly ludicrous remembrancer of their absence, as 
" of one that once had wings." 

If we grovel and pick up all our daily food at our feet, 
and never soar, we may grow fat and huge hke the Dodo,^ 
which was once a true dove, beautiful, hot-blooded, and 
strong of wing, as becomes Aphrodite^s own, but got itself 
developed into a big goose of a pigeon, waddling as it 
went, and proving itself worthy of its extinction and of 
its name, — the only hint of its ancestry being in its 
bill. 

But even the best wings can't act in vacuo ; they 
must have something to energize upon, and all imagina- 
tion worth the name must act upon some objective truth, 
must achieve for itself, or through others, a realized ideal 

* This is a real bit of natural history, from the Mauritius. The 
first pigeons there, having plenty on the ground to eat, and no need to 
fly, and waxing fat like Jeshurun, did not " plume their feathers, and 
let grow their wings," but grovelled on, got monstrous, so that their 
wings, taking the huff, dwarfed into a fluttering stump. Sir T. Her- 
bert thus quaintly describes this embarrassed creature : — " The Dodo, 
a bird the Dutch call Walghvogel, or Dod Eerson ; her body is round 
and fat, which occasions the slow pace, so that her corpulence is so 
great as few of them weigh less than fifty pounds. It is of a melan- 
choly visage, as though sensible of nature's injury, in framing so mas- 
sie a body to be directed by complimental wings, such, indeed, as are 
unable to hoise her from the ground, serving only to rank her among 
birds ; her traine three small plumes, short and unproportionable ; her 
legs suiting her body; her pounce sharp; her appetite strong and 
greedy; stones and iron are digested." — 1625. We have in our time 
seen an occasional human Dodo, with its " complimental wings," — 
a pure and advanced Darwinian bird, — its earthly appetites strong 
and greedy; " an ill-favored head " ; " great black eyes " ; " its gape 
huge and wide"; "slow-paced and stupid"; its visage absurd and 
melancholy — very. 



426 A JACOBITE FAMILY. 

or an idealized reality. Beauty and truth must embrace 
each other, and goodness bless them both ; 

" For Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters 
That doat upon each other, — friends to man, 
Living together under the same roof. 
And never to be sundered without tears." 




Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & C<v 




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